Quality Thresholds, Features, and Dosage in Early Care and Education: Secondary Data Analyses of Child Outcomes

ISBN-13: 9781119308669 / Angielski / Miękka / 2016 / 316 str.

Margaret Burchinal; Martha Zaslow; Louisa Tarullo

Opis

The questions of whether preschool children benefi t more strongly when early care and education (ECE) is at or above a threshold of quality, has specifi c quality features, and/or is of longer duration were examined in secondary data analyses of eight large ECE studies. These issues are pivotal in recent ECE policies designed to improve school readiness skills, especially for children from low-income families. Threshold analyses examined whether quality had stronger associations with gains in child outcomes in settings with high levels of quality than those with lower quality. Features analyses considered whether specifi c measures of instruction and of teacher-child interaction were more predictive of gains than global quality measures. Dosage analyses tested whether the amount of in ECE settings or in instruction in specifi c content areas predicted child outcomes. Threshold analyses provided some evidence for thresholds in measures of instructional quality in relation to reading and language skills in meta-analyses based on a prior-selected cut-points and, less clearly, in empirical methods designed to identify cut-points. Analyses examining quality features indicated stronger prediction of gains in child outcomes from interaction-specifi c and content-specifi c measures than from global measures. Propensity score analyses indicated that children had higher school readiness skills at the end of preschool and in kindergarten if they had two years of Head Start compared to one year. Finally, dosage analyses indicated that children showed larger gains in content areas when teachers spent more time providing instruction in those areas or when children had fewer absences. No evidence of quality by quantity interactions emerged. Implications of the thresholds fi ndings for ECE policies such as Quality Rating and Improvement Systems are discussed. The dosage fi ndings support the growing trend toward more than one year of access to publicly funded preschool programs for low-income children as well as increased focus on the content of ECE activities and instruction to enhance language, literacy, and math skills.

Spis treści

QUALITY THRESHOLDS, FEATURES, AND DOSAGE IN EARLY CARE AND EDUCATION: SECONDARY DATA ANALYSES OF CHILD OUTCOMES CONTENTS I.  QUALITY THRESHOLDS, FEATURES, AND DOSAGE IN EARLY CARE AND        7 EDUCATION: INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW Martha Zaslow, Rachel Anderson, Zakia Redd, Julia Wessel, Paula Daneri, Katherine Green, Elizabeth W. Cavadel, Louisa Tarullo, Margaret Burchinal, and Ivelisse Martinez–Beck   II.  QUALITY THRESHOLDS, FEATURES, AND DOSAGE IN             27 EARLY CARE AND EDUCATION: METHODS Margaret Burchinal, Yange Xue, Anamarie Auger, Hsiao–Chuan Tien, Andrew Mashburn, Elizabeth W. Cavadel, and Ellen Peisner–Feinberg   III. TESTING FOR QUALITY THRESHOLDS AND FEATURES         46 IN EARLY CARE AND EDUCATION Margaret Burchinal, Yange Xue, Anamarie Auger, Hsiao–Chuan Tien, Andrew Mashburn, Ellen Peisner–Feinberg, Elizabeth W. Cavadel, Martha Zaslow, and Louisa Tarullo   IV.  TESTING FOR DOSAGE–OUTCOME ASSOCIATIONS IN    64 EARLY CARE AND EDUCATION Yange Xue, Margaret Burchinal, Anamarie Auger, Hsiao–Chuan Tien, Andrew Mashburn, Ellen Peisner–Feinberg, Elizabeth W. Cavadel, Martha Zaslow, and Louisa Tarullo   V.  QUALITY THRESHOLDS, FEATURES, AND DOSAGE IN EARLY CARE     75 AND EDUCATION: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS Martha Zaslow, Margaret Burchinal, Louisa Tarullo, and Ivelisse Martinez–Beck REFERENCES        88 APPENDIX         95 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS       99   COMMENTARY   REFLECTIONS ON QUALITY AND DOSAGE OF PRESCHOOL AND CHILDREN S DEVELOPMENT       100 Elizabeth Votruba–Drzal and Portia Miller   CONTRIBUTORS        114 STATEMENT OF EDITORIAL POLICY       118   SUBJECT  INDEX       120