Why Preschool Pays Off: A breakthrough study links early education to better life choices

A new report revisits Carnegie Corporation grantee the Brookline Early Education Project (BEEP), which existed from 1973 to 1981 and was the nation’s first health and developmental program sponsored by a public school and open to children from birth to three years in adjacent urban and suburban communities. Results of a 25- year follow-up study,¹ conducted between 1998 and 2001, show the potential of high-quality early intervention programs to level the playing field and lead to measurable improvements in participants’ school performance and adult life choices—saving taxpayers’ money over time.

Early childhood education is not as easy as A,B,C. It is challenging and costly, with benefits that can be difficult to quantify. While preschool may be thought of as a recent development in the history of U.S. public education, it’s really been around since the 17^th century, when the English charity school movement was formed in an attempt to educate poor children. Infant Schools for factory workers’ children were adopted by U.S. educators and reformers during the Industrial Revolution, but died out within two decades as American social values changed and mothers were again tasked with educating young children at home. For over a century, preschool’s popularity rose and fell with the swing of the economic pendulum, and a two-tier system (custodial day care for the poor versus supplemental nursery school for the affluent) evolved for the care and education of the very young child.² Eventually, the sweeping intellectual and social change of the 1960s and 70s dramatically altered the outlook for early education.

Established in 1965 as part of the “War on Poverty,” Head Start, the flagship national program for three- to five-year-olds, is still the largest funded program among an array of federal early childhood education and care programs, according to the U.S. Government Accounting Office.³ The history of Carnegie Corporation’s advocacy on behalf of young children’s care and education is closely intertwined with that of Head Start. Throughout the 1960s, the Corporation supported research that proved crucial in securing and safeguarding federal funds for that groundbreaking program. Over time, when political support for the program flagged, the strength of Corporation-funded projects such as the High/Scope Perry Preschool in Ypsilanti, Michigan sustained policymakers’ belief in the benefits of early education, especially for disadvantaged children, and helped keep Head Start alive. By 2006, more than 23 million children had been enrolled in Head Start at a cost exceeding $86 billion, and the budget was set at $6.79 billion for fiscal year 2006.⁴ Given the size of the investment, persistent questions about early education results are inevitable: Are preschool programs effective? Do they reach the right children? Could they do more…or do it better?

For decades, Carnegie Corporation has sought answers to these and other fundamental questions: How do children learn? What do they need to survive, to excel? How should these needs be met? When, in the mid 1960s, the country’s concerns shifted toward social justice, the Corporation’s support went to programs aimed at helping children “because they are the least able to protect themselves and because they represent our future,” said Alan Pifer, Carnegie Corporation president, 1967–1982. Program staff saw the existence of Head Start and other expanding support for federal education as providing an opportunity to help shape early childhood education policy by producing sound scientific information on early learning, and one of the primary goals was to achieve a better understanding of the essential, most widely replicable elements of effective preschool programs. Appropriating over $18 million toward child development projects, the Corporation became the leading foundation in the field.

Given what we now know about the rate and scope of development during a child’s first years of life, the assumption that early education matters may seem obvious. But years of study were required to prove that experiences during this critical period have lifelong implications. A report from the Carnegie Task Force on Meeting the Needs of Young Children concluded that from birth to age three, brain development is rapid, extensive and vulnerable to environmental influences, making children highly sensitive to the protective mechanisms of parental and family support. A strong start in life including such factors as good nutrition, dependable caregivers and community support can promote learning and prevent damage, the study says, influencing how individuals function from the earliest preschool years all the way through adolescence and even adulthood.⁵?

1 “The Brookline Early Education Project: A 25-Year Follow-up Study of a Family-Centered Early Health and Development Intervention,” Pediatrics 2005.

2 “Cahan, Emily D. Past Caring: A History of U.S. Preschool Care and Education for the Poor, 1820–1965, New York: National Center for Children in Poverty, 1989.

3 “Education and Care: Head Start Key Among Array of Early Childhood Programs, but National Research on Effectiveness Not Completed.” Statement of Marnie S. Shaul, U.S. General Accounting Office Testimony Before the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

4 Head Start Program Fact Sheet (www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/hsb/research/2006/html).

5 Carnegie Corporation of New York, “The Quiet Crisis.” In Starting Points: Meeting the Needs of Our Youngest Children (www.carnegie.org/starting_points/startpt1.html).

Written by: Karen Theroux. Theroux is an editor/writer in the Corporation’s Public Affairs department with many years’ experience in educational publishing and communications.