'We are in desperate need to learn about what works'

Preschool Years: As the Twig Is Bent

Recent research on brain development provides dramatic proof of the importance of a nurturing, secure and stimulating environment in the first three years of life. If mothers are out working, however, the quality of child care provided by others will largely determine how well the children fare. To care for their children, many mothers will rely on relatives and friends, some of whom will be loving and attentive and some of whom will not.

Also, the strain on the day-care system is a matter of grave concern to child-development and child-care experts. A recent study found that 40 percent of day-care centers for infants and toddlers gave less than the minimal standard of care. Problems ranged from safety hazards to unresponsive caregivers to a lack of toys.

Another newly published study finds that child care for the working poor in California can cost up to 90 percent of a parent's minimum-wage income. And the system--even before the effects of the reforms are felt--is unable to meet much of the state's need, particularly for the care of infants.

The challenge for state governments, which now have the lion's share of responsibility for day-care programs, is to oversee and subsidize child care in such a way as to increase the likelihood of good outcomes for children. This is true regardless of welfare reform, of course. Bad day care can harm the development of any child. Research has shown that children benefit when caregivers are trained and the ratio of staff to children is high. But high-quality care is expensive, and states will have less money to subsidize day care as block grants replace the more generous federal entitlements that were swept away in the tidal wave of welfare reform.

In deciding how to invest their smaller share of federal funds, states may wish to emulate already established programs specifically aimed at helping the development of young children. The most notable of these models is Head Start.

High-quality day care. A crucial difference

Does Head Start Make a Difference?

The many past evaluations of Head Start, while generally upbeat in their assessment of the program's effects on school attendance and children's health, have uncovered a troubling issue. Gains in cognitive test scores appear to disappear after a few years. This fade-out effect has led some critics to label the program a scam, arguing that it has little, if any, long-run benefit for children.

A recent RAND/UCLA study reexamines the program's effectiveness using a large national database and rigorous methodology. Researchers Janet Currie, a RAND consultant, and Duncan Thomas, a RAND staff economist, provide some new and useful insights.

• Head Start has positive and persistent effects on the cognitive achievement of children in the program. Their performance on vocabulary, reading and math tests is significantly better than that of brothers and sisters who stay home, and it is also better than that of children who attend other preschool programs.

• Unlike previous studies of Head Start that have demonstrated the fading of gains on test scores, the RAND/UCLA analysis distinguishes children by race and ethnicity. It shows that, for white children, the positive effects on test scores persist well into adolescence. Further, Head Start attendance lowers their chances of having to repeat a grade in elementary school.

• African American children who complete a Head Start program also have large and significant test score gains--on a par with their white schoolmates. But the gains are quickly lost. Moreover, for them, paticipation in the program has no effect on the probability of grade repetition.

• Regardless of race, children attending Head Start or other preschools benefit from greater access to preventive health services than children who do not attend. Immunization rates are higher, for example. However, there is no measurable effect of Head Start on longer-run indicators of health and nutritional status, such as child height-to-age measures.

• In a subsequent analysis, Currie and Thomas found that Head Start participation also resulted in large gains for Hispanic children. Compared with their stay-at-home siblings, Hispanic children in Head Start programs were able to narrow the test-score gap with white children by at least one-quarter and close the gap in the probability of having to repeat a grade by two-thirds.

In sum, these studies show that for white children and for most Hispanics, Head Start is a true success story, giving poor kids a much-needed leg up in a highly competitive world. But the puzzle of why some groups benefit less than others remains. Perhaps the answers lie elsewhere--in the quality of the programs they attend, in the families and neighborhoods they live in, or in the schools they subsequently attend. As important as those questions are, they will go unanswered until better, more richly detailed data become available.

How Do Parents Choose?

A study led by RAND economist Arleen Leibowitz sheds some light on how working parents choose among various child-care options. The findings have important implications for crafting government policies that affect not only day care but schooling generally.

Parents have three basic day-care choices--care at home, care in someone else's home (family day-care), and center-based care. Parents who are making choices may weigh many features of child care that have little or nothing to do with its quality for the child. They may care about the cost of care, about its reliability, about location, or about the hours that care is available. Thus, the more that can be learned about the role these considerations play in the child-care choices parents make, the more sensibly government subsidies can be tailored.

The research team learned that parents who value the educational components of child care choose center-based care, while parents for whom hours, location, and cost of care are important choose care at home. Choice of family day-care increased if parents thought it was important that the child know the caregiver. Several key determinants (such as mother's education) affect choices, primarily by increasing the importance that parents place on the various characteristics of care.

A nurturing, secure and stimulating environment.

Policy Signposts

Many studies have shown that day-care centers with appropriate educational programs and trained staff promote child development in positive ways. Thus, Leibowitz and her colleagues suggest, it might be a good idea if government policies encourage care in such centers so that children will get an optimal amount of education during their preschool years. But the recently enacted Child Care and Developmental Block Grant does not promote center care over other types of child care; 75 percent of the funds authorized under this act will go to direct subsidies to poor families for child-care services from all types of providers, not only those that enhance children's development.

On the other hand, given the current tax system's bias against home day care, the block-grant approach may not be bad policy. We really won't know, say the researchers, until we answer the question of whether subsidies tied to the use of developmental care are preferable to those that subsidize care of the parents' choice, regardless of what that choice might be.

The answer has direct implications for debate on other public policies, such as vouchers for schooling, which would enable parents to send children to any school they choose. Additional research on how parents structure their decisions about the care and education of their children would help us understand the issues and form policies more clearly.

Can We Learn from the Military?

Responding to a push from Congress, the military has worked hard to improve the quality and availability of its day-care services. Changes required by the Military Child Care Act of 1989 in the staffing, training, compensation and funding of the CDCs were implemented in typically thorough military fashion. The centers undergo four rigorous, unannounced inspections a year, which result in Department of Defense (DoD) certification if successfully completed.

Congress also required at least 50 centers to be accredited in accordance with the standards of a "national accrediting body" for early childhood programs. The 50 accredited centers were to serve as a demonstration program from which other nonaccredited centers could learn about best practices.

Explicit Guidance for Staff

Nonetheless, Congress's provision for an evaluation was unprecedented. In the larger society, accreditation is entirely voluntary (only a minuscule 4 percent of state-licensed centers are accredited), and there has never been a national study of its effects on child development. While not definitive, the RAND analysis sheds important light on that issue.

A critical shortage: Day care for the very young

Project leader Gail L. Zellman, a research psychologist at RAND, and Anne S. Johansen, a RAND consultant and health policy analyst with the European Union Commission in Luxembourg, found that accreditation complements and expands the benefits of military certification in important ways.

To gain accreditation, CDCs must meet the standards set by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), the only national organization with the authority to grant accreditation for early childhood programs.

The NAEYC requirements for day-care centers, like those maintained by the military, cover space, equipment and safety needs, group size, staff-to-child ratio, caregiver training and the like. However, the association goes well beyond these largely functional measures to provide explicit guidance for caregiver-child interactions--qualities that are closely associated with gains in a child's cognitive development, language skills and social development.

For example, the standards specify that staff express affection and respect through holding and talking with children, that they speak to children in a friendly and positive manner, that the children be encouraged to express their feelings, and that staff encourage cooperative behavior and use positive guidance techniques to cope with negative emotions. The NAEYC also stresses the need to provide continuity of care and minimize the shuffling of children among classrooms and caregivers.

It is this emphasis on qualitative issues and appropriate educational programs that most distinguishes accreditation from military certification. Although certification standards are extensive and rigorous, they basically constitute a checklist for meeting DoD regulations and ensuring overall compliance with the mandates of the legislation. Certification is, in fact, much like state licensing procedures in its focus on health, fire and safety issues.

Zellman and Johansen find ample evidence that accreditation provides a range of additional benefits over the DoD certification process alone. Nearly everyone involved in the process judged the effect of accreditation to be overwhelmingly positive. Seventy-five percent cited higher staff morale, better-defined goals, and higher-quality programs among the chief benefits.

Given the small add-on costs of accreditation and the substantial apparent benefits, the researchers conclude, universal accreditation of military day-care centers is a desirable and achievable goal.

Are there lessons in the military's experience for the larger society?

Zellman believes there are: "The military certification process closely parallels state licensing procedures for civilian day-care centers. Both are mainly concerned with functional requirements--what is needed in the way of space and staff--and with health and safety issues. We found these to be necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for high-quality day-care programs that emphasize child development. Our study convinced the military that accreditation brought extra benefits that justified the additional cost. There is every reason to assume these benefits would carry over to civilian day care."

The message for states seems clear: Licensing ensures only that day-care centers meet minimal standards of structure, health and safety; accreditation takes a big step toward assuring high-quality, developmentally sound programs.

However, accreditation in the civilian world would be far more costly than the same process in the military. And that creates a dilemma. Anything that increases the cost of day care to parents--be it the developmental enrichment of programs or more stringent state regulations--may discourage poor women from enrolling their children. This, in turn, may affect their ability and willingness to work. Thus, two worthy goals--getting women off welfare and into jobs and providing developmentally sound programs for their offspring--are in danger of canceling each other out.

Zellman suggests a possible solution: The new federal block grant for child care and development includes a "set aside" to improve care. This might be used to support accreditation efforts, thus lowering the cost to parents. But she adds that as long as parents do not insist on or understand the importance of high-quality programs, day-care centers will have only weak incentives to seek accreditation.