The Children of the Cost, Quality & Outcomes Study Go to School

Investigators: Ellen Peisner-Feinberg and Richard Clifford at UNC (peisnerf@mail.fpg.unc.edu) , Peg Burchinal and Noreen Yazejian at UNC-CH, Patty Byler at UCLA, Jean Rustici at Yale

Research goals: To examine the long-term effects of variations in child care quality on children's development. A cohort of children who attended community child care centers has been followed since 1993, from their next-to-last preschool year through the second grade.

To date, there has been little prospective, longitudinal research examining the long-term effects of child care quality on children's development. This project allowed us to gather data through second grade, to examine long-term effects beyond the first year of formal schooling.

In addition, this project allowed us to engage in a broad dissemination effort of the results of the study, including national press conferences and presentations and preparation of multiple products for diverse audiences.

Major findings:

• High quality child care is an important element in achieving the national goal of having all children ready for school. Our findings showed that the quality of children's experiences in typical child care centers affects their development while they are in child care and their readiness for school. Children who attended higher quality child care centers performed better on measures of both cognitive skills (e.g., math and language abilities) and social skills (e.g., interactions with peers, problem behaviors) in child care and through the transition into school. Further, this influence of child care quality was important for children from a wide range of family backgrounds.
• High quality child care continues to positively predict children's performance well into their school careers. Our longitudinal analysis of children's performance indicated that the quality of child care experienced by children before they entered school continued to affect their development at least through kindergarten and in many cases through the end of second grade. Child care quality was related to basic cognitive skills (language and math) and children's behavioral skills in the classroom (cognitive/attention skills, sociability, problem behaviors, and peer relations), both of which are important factors in children's ability to take advantage of the opportunities available in school.
• Children who have traditionally been at risk of not doing well in school are affected more by the quality of child care experiences than other children. For some outcomes (math skills and problem behaviors), children whose mothers had lower levels of education-children who often are at risk of not doing well in school-were more sensitive to the negative effects of poor quality child care and received more benefits from high quality child care. Moreover, for these children who attended typical community child care centers, the influences of child care quality were sustained through second grade.
• The quality of child care classroom practices was related to children's cognitive development, while the closeness of the child care teacher-child relationship influenced children's social development through the early school years. Children who attended child care with higher quality classroom practices had better cognitive development (language and math skills) through early elementary school. Children who had closer relationships with their child care teachers had better classroom behavior and social skills (greater cognitive/attention skills and sociability, fewer problem behaviors, and better peer relations) through early elementary school. It is no surprise that the nature of children's experiences in child care is important, but the results of this study confirm the lasting impact of these early experiences. High quality child care experiences, in terms of both classroom practices and teacher-child relationships, enhance children's abilities to take advantage of the educational opportunities in school.

Policy, practice or professional development implications: This project has clearly demonstrated the importance of high quality preschool child care for enhancing children's cognitive, language, and social development into the early elementary school years. Below are specific implications, broken down into three broad categories - fiscal strategies, professional preparation/compensation approaches, and program/system improvements.

Fiscal strategies:
The first phase of the study demonstrated the link between the cost of services and the quality of care received by children in typical child care centers in the US. In order to raise the quality of care, attention needs to be given to the financing of child care.

• Increased investments in child care from both the public and private sector are needed. While progress has been made over the past decade, greater effort will be required to raise quality to the level called for in this report.
• The quality set aside in the federal and state funds for child care is a wise investment and should be extended. A broad examination of the use of the quality set aside should be undertaken to ensure that efforts are targeted to improving the quality of services as originally intended. The funds available for quality improvements should be expanded.
• Child care subsidies should be redesigned to offer incentives for providing high quality care. Subsidy systems can be reconfigured to tie subsidy payments to higher program standards and to provide higher compensation for teachers. Such approaches to subsidy systems provide good opportunities for improving the quality of care in all states.
• Tax incentives should encourage use of higher quality care and education. The current federal and state tax credits have ceilings so low that families purchasing high quality care get tax credits for only a fraction of the real cost of services. These incentives encourage parents to choose the lowest cost services available, which are often of lower quality as well.

Professional preparation and compensation approaches:
Findings of the first phase of the study suggest that the training and compensation of teachers who work in early care and education settings are important areas to target for improving quality. Our research indicated that the quality of child care was related to both the formal education levels and the specialized early childhood training of the classroom teachers. Similarly, teacher compensation was closely linked to the quality of services in child care. These findings further underline the need to raise quality, indicating that these child care experiences continue to influence children's development through the early elementary years.

• Regulations at the state level should call for much higher minimum levels of training for teachers than are currently in place. Formal training is a key element for teacher preparation and should be required such as through some form of credentialling comparable to the K-12 system.
• A major new initiative to support teacher preparation programs should be implemented, similar to the federal initiatives to improve professional preparation for teachers working with young children with disabilities. In particular, teacher preparation programs should include a greater focus on helping teachers develop skills in relationship building with young children.
• Inservice training is also important in building a high quality early childhood system. The current systems of training and technical assistance available to Head Start programs and programs serving children with disabilities could be used as models for extending support services to all early childhood programs in the country.
• Teacher compensation issues are important to address so that these training initiatives will produce long-term improvements in childcare quality. Teacher salaries are so low that trained teachers leave the early childhood field in great numbers, resulting in overall lower levels of teacher qualifications and child care quality.

System and program change strategies:
Adequate improvement in the quality of care is unlikely to occur without improvements in the entire system. Attention should be paid to the infrastructure, including the regulatory system in states, the expanded use of program accreditation, and development of broader professional preparation opportunities.

• Recent comprehensive attempts by states to provide preschool care and education experiences for children are well founded and should be greatly expanded. The results of the study support policies focusing on early childhood care and education as a means of improving children's chances of being ready for school.
• Programs that are accredited by national accrediting agencies tend to have higher quality. Efforts to expand use of such accrediting could prove useful in overall efforts to raise the quality of child care.
• In order to improve the level of education and specialized training of child care teachers called for in the previous section, improvements and expansion of the teacher preparation systems will be needed.
• States should focus on improving licensing standards as a means of raising quality. As indicated in the first phase of this study, improvement in regulation of childcare can have a positive impact on quality. Child care policies which keep regulations at a minimum and exempt categories of providers from regulation to help expand supply, encourage the use of lower quality informal and unregulated care and are harmful to the children.

Publications, products:

Burchinal, M. R., Peisner-Feinberg, E., Bryant, D. M., & Clifford, R. (2000). Children's social and cognitive development and child care quality: Testing for differential associations related to poverty, gender, or ethnicity. Applied Developmental Science, 4, 149-165.

Howes, C. (2000). Social-emotional classroom climate in child care, child-teacher relationships and children's second-grade peer relations. Social Development, 9(2), 191-204.

Howes, C., Phillipsen, L. C., & Peisner-Feinberg, E. (2000). The consistency of perceived teacher-child relationships between preschool and kindergarten. Journal of School Psychology, 38, 113-132.

Peisner-Feinberg, E. S., Burchinal, M. R., Clifford, R. M., Culkin, M., Howes, C., Kagan, S. L., Yazejian, N., Byler, P., & Rustici, J. (1999). The children of the Cost, Quality, & Outcomes Study go to school: Technical report. Chapel Hill, NC: Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center, UNC-Chapel Hill.

Dissemination documents:
National Center for Early Development and Learning. (1998, August). Spotlight # 2: Quality care does mean better child outcomes. Chapel Hill, NC: author.

National Center for Early Development and Learning. (1999, June). Spotlight # 11: CQO children go to school). Chapel Hill, NC: author.

National Center for Early Development and Learning. (1999, September). Spotlight # 14: Child care social climate. Chapel Hill, NC: author.

Peisner-Feinberg, E. S., Burchinal, M. R., Clifford, R. M., Culkin, M., Howes, C., Kagan, S. L., Yazejian, N., Byler, P., & Rustici, J. (1999). The children of the Cost, Quality, & Outcomes Study go to school: Executive summary. Chapel Hill, NC: Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Peisner-Feinberg, E. S., Burchinal, M. R., Clifford, R. M., Culkin, M., Howes, C., Kagan, S. L., Yazejian, N., Byler, P., & Rustici, J. (1999). The children of the Cost, Quality, & Outcomes Study go to school: Parent summary. Chapel Hill, NC: Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Press Conference:
A main thrust of our dissemination activities took place in June, 1999, when we worked with a Washington DC media firm to help coordinate three 3 events to release our findings. First, we held an audio telephone conference with members of the Media Strategies Group to discuss our research and get their responses to our findings. Second, we conducted an audio press conference with 22 reporters from around the nation. Finally, we held a live press conference in Washington, DC, which included as speakers the Secretary of the US Department of Education Richard Riley and the Assistant Secretary of the Administration for Children and Families Olivia Golden.