What Are The Long-term Consequences Of Offering Early Childhood Education On Key Student Outcomes?

Impacts of Early Childhood Education on Medium-and Long-Term Educational Outcomes

This meta-analysis examines over 50 years of data on the impact of early childhood interventions designed to improve student performance. As schools look for initiatives that can make a difference improving important social outcomes, early childhood education (ECE), as a structural intervention, appears to offer results that last beyond the first few years of elementary school. This study finds ECE has a positive effect on reducing special education placements (effect size = 0.33), reduces grade retention (effect size = 0.26), and increases high school graduation rates (effect size = 0.24). Although, these are considered to be small effect sizes they have an impact improving large numbers of student’s education experiences while reducing overall education expenditures.

Citation: McCoy, D. C., Yoshikawa, H., Ziol-Guest, K. M., Duncan, G. J., Schindler, H. S., Magnuson, K., Yang, R., Koepp, A., & Shonkoff, J. P. (2017). Impacts of Early Childhood Education on Medium-and Long-Term Educational Outcomes. Educational Researcher, 46(8), 474-487.

Link: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0013189X17737739