"When people think about the roots of a child’s struggles in math class, they may picture a tough teacher, a missed unit or a sudden loss of confidence around fractions. Our new study suggests we should be looking much earlier, at kindergarten, or even before. Using linked provincial data from more than 25,000 Ontario children, we tracked students from kindergarten through Grade 9 to see how each child’s “school readiness” — their cognitive, language, social, emotional and physical skills at school entry — related to their math performance nearly a decade later."
EXPANDING PUBLIC EDUCATION
Beginning School at Age 4
Evidence
Browse by:
Economic Arguments|
Research with Additional Links
.jpg)
Math gaps between Ontario kids start in kindergarten — and often persist through Grade 9
Child Care Investments Really Do Pay Off
Economists Michael Baker, Johnathan Gruber and Kevin Milligan have just produced a remarkably important research study. We all know about the studies (here, here and here) that show that Quebec’s $5 a day child care had really significant positive impacts on women’s labour force participation. The employment rate of Quebec women went from substantially below the rest of Canada to substantially above. The fixed, predictable parent fee removed a major barrier to mothers’ employment. And Pierre Fortin and his colleagues (here) have given us good reason to believe that these increases in women’s employment generated by predictable parent fees brought in enough additional tax revenue to more than pay for the costs of the child care program. But this paper by Baker, Gruber and Milligan goes farther and deeper than that.
In Boston, Bringing the Best of Pre-K Practices into the Elementary Years
Boston has focused on creating and implementing a curriculum that aligns the content and instructional practices of the pre-K through second grade span.
Making Numeracy and Literacy Learning Visible in Play-Based Publicly Funded Programs
There is an increased movement toward locating early childhood programs within school environments. However, there remains some tension between long-held perceptions of play and the realities of play-based pedagogies, resulting in increasing pressure for evidence of outcomes in academic skills, such as numeracy and literacy.
JK’s role is supporting allophone children
The findings are clear. Allophone children who attended daycare (or pre-kindergarten at age four, though to a lesser extent) show better cognitive development, improved social and emotional skills, and greater communication abilities.
A significant part of the solution to early learning and child care resides in our schools by offering universal pre-kindergarden for 4-year-olds as an extension of public education.