The Wiley Handbook of Early Childhood Development Programs, Practices, and Policies

The first and only comprehensive review of current early childhood development theory, practices, policies, and the science behind them

This unique and important bookprovides a comprehensive overview of the current theory, practices, and policies in early childhood development withinthe contexts of family, school, and community, and society at large. Moreover, it synthesizes scientifically rigorous research from an array of disciplines in an effort to identify the most effective strategies for promoting early childhood development.

Research into childhood development is booming, and the scientific knowledge base concerning early childhood development is now greater than that of any other stage of the human life span. At the same time, efforts to apply that knowledge to early childhood practices, programs, and policies have never been greater or more urgent. Yet, surprisingly, until The Handbook of Early Childhood Development Programs, Practices, and Policies, there was no comprehensive, critical review of the applied science in the field.

The book begins with in-depth coverage of child and family approaches. From there it moves onto a consideration of school- and community-based strategies. It concludes with a discussion of current social policies on health and development in early childhood and their implications. 

• Provides a comprehensive overview of the state of the knowledge base, along with guidance for the future of the field
• Examines the underlying theory and basic science guiding efforts to promote early childhood development
• Critically reviews the strength of the empirical support for individual practices, programs, and policies
• Explores key opportunities and barriers policymakers and practitioners face when implementing various approaches
• Pays particular attention to socioeconomically disadvantaged and other disenfranchised populations

The Handbook of Early Childhood Development Programs, Practices, and Policies is a valuable resource for practitioners, scholars, graduate students, and advanced undergraduate students across the social sciences who are interested in strengthening their understanding of current strategies for promoting early childhood development and the science informing those strategies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Jan 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781118937327

Book preview

Preface

The cumulative scientific knowledge on early childhood is perhaps greater than for any other time in the life span, with a foundational theme in the study of human development being the formative role of early experience. In turn, attempts to apply this knowledge to early childhood programs, practices, and policies are defining features of the zeitgeist, with the study of applied early childhood development now a thriving interdisciplinary field. Moreover, ideological divides in the United States over the roles of government in the lives of children, aside, attention to early childhood from stakeholders outside of the sciences has never been greater; families, communities, businesses, and policy decision makers across the political spectrum have increasingly recognized the importance of a healthy and thriving childhood for the future of the country (Shonkoff, 2010; Tseng, 2012).

Yet, this Handbook also comes at a critical demographic nexus for the United States. Rapidly rising economic inequality is opening a radical divide between the lives of those with exceptional wealth and the many more in exceptional poverty. The large number of young children on the losing end of this divide face disadvantage in their homes, early learning centers, and communities that translates into meaningful differences in early childhood development. For example, our own analysis of nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Cohort of 2010 shows that children from low-income households score between 0.80 and 1 full standard deviations lower than their high-income counter parts when it comes to reading, math, and science achievement at kindergarten entry. These gaps tend to persist or even grow as children develop and give rise to large differences in educational achievement and attainment, as well as adult employment and earnings (Duncan, Magnuson, & Votruba-Drzal, 2015; Jäntti, 2009). Socio-economic gaps in behavioral skills that are essential for success in school, including attention and conduct skills, begin in early childhood as well and continue into adulthood (Duncan et al., 2015). Although narrowing modestly very recently, economic gaps in children’s development have grown in recent decades: the income-achievement gap is 30–40% larger for children born in 2001 than it was for children born in the late 1970s and is now nearly twice the size of the Black–White test score gap (Reardon, 2011; Reardon & Portilla, 2016).

At the same time that economic inequality has grown, the United States has also been dramatically reshaped by immigration across the last two decades, no more so than for the population of young children in the country. In particular, the population of first- and second-generation immigrant children in the US grew by more than 50% between 1995 and 2014. Today, children of immigrants make up one fourth of all children in the US (Child Trends Databank, 2014). The implications of the increased cultural and linguistic diversity have become a pressing topic of interest for all professionals who are working with, shaping policies for, or studying young children. In addition, the typical family structures of young children have shifted, particularly for young children of color and those growing up poor. Births to unmarried mothers grew from 32% of all births in 1960 to 40% in 2014 and are particularly prevalent for ethnic minority women. In 2013, 72% of all births to Black women, 53% of births to Hispanic women, and 66% of births to Indian or Alaskan native women were to unmarried women (Child Trends Databank, 2015). Discouragingly, young children have also, for several years, been overrepresented among those whose families are involved with child welfare services, including maltreatment cases.

There does not exist, however, a comprehensive assessment of applied developmental science on early childhood in this new national context. To meet this need, the present Handbook provides a thorough compiling of knowledge – theory and empirical work – on contemporary early childhood development programs, practices, and policies. Bringing together the cumulative expertise, the Handbook provides guidance for future scientific inquiry, and intends to guide the design and implementation of future policies and programs for young children and their families. To do so, the Handbook is organized in four sections.

In the first section, four chapters capture the state of young children in the United States, focusing on their achievement (Chapter 1, Sabol & Pianta), mental health (Chapter 2, Campbell), physical health (Chapter 3, Berry), and exposure to risk (Chapter 4, Bradley). Together, these chapters offer a wide-angle view of children’s lives, today, including opportunities for and challenges to improving developmental outcomes. In turn, the next three chapters help contextualize the state of applied developmental science on early childhood. Specifically, this section starts (Chapter 5, Morris & Connors) with a historical and forward-looking perspective on the foundation of our field in bioecological systems theory, taking stock of how far we have come and how far we have yet to go to realize Urie Bronfenbrenner’s vision. From there two empirical advances in the field are summarized and assessed: the movement toward empirically based programs, practices, and policies (Chapter 6, Burchinal & Forestieri) and dramatic neuroscience advances in our understanding of early growth and development (Chapter 7, Merz & Noble). These three chapters help frame the conceptual and scientific relevance for each of the following chapters in the Handbook and, more generally, the critical need to focus empirical work on early childhood.

The remaining sections of the Handbook directly address programs, practices, and policies relevant for young children’s development. In these sections authors review existing theoretical, empirical, and applied issues most relevant for the topics at hand. As a final step in their evaluation of the state of the empirical evidence, we have asked authors to reflect on the principles laid out in Chapter 5, concerning internal and external validity and practical importance of findings. To do so, most chapters in the following sections provide brief summary tables of empirical benchmarks for the program, practice, and policy topics at hand. These tables are efficient complements to the rich, precise evaluation provided in the text of the chapters.

Two sections in the Handbook are focused on programs and practices. One section addresses early childhood education and care, including public preschool (Chapter 8, Barnett, Votruba-Drzal, Dearing, & Carolan) and ECEC considerations for dual language learners (Chapter 9, Pizzo & Páez) and children with developmental disabilities (Chapter 10, Hauser-Cram, Heyman, & Bottema-Beutel). This section also covers classroom-based intervention models (Chapter 11, Jones, McCoy, & Hay) and early child care (Chapter 12, Johnson). Together, these chapters provide a thorough review of early care and learning contexts that young children experience outside of their homes as well as a careful assessment of the empirical knowledge on salient programmatic, practice, and policy features that may maximize the benefits of these contexts for select populations and US children, at large.

As a closely connected follow-up to the focus on ECEC, three chapters cover family-school partnerships in early childhood (Chapter 13, Sheridan, Moen, & Knoche), parenting and home-visiting interventions (Chapter 14, Donelan-McCall), and dual-generation interventions (Chapter 15, Gardner, Brooks-Gunn, & Chase-Lansdale). Each addresses the cross-context links that characterize children’s early lives and the relevance of thriving connections between home, school, and community as well as the relevance of supporting parents’ social, emotional, and cognitive functioning and capacities as a route toward supporting their parenting and their children’s growth.

To conclude, the final section of the Handbook covers policies with serious implications for young children and their families. These policy chapters are purposefully focused on the new demographic reality of the nation’s children with special attention to immigration (Chapter 16, Park & Yoshikawa), marriage (Chapter 17, Levine Coley), child welfare (Chapter 18, Slack & Paul), income (Chapter 19, Huston) and cash-supports (Chapter 20, Wolf, Berg, Morris, & Aber), and work-family policies (Chapter 21, Gassman-Pines and Goldstein). Collectively, these chapters address policies at local, state, and federal levels that have consequences for children and their families. In so doing, they provide coverage of a thorough array of public approaches to supporting children and families.

As a collection, this Handbook identifies strategies that are most effective for promoting early childhood development, with a focus on early childhood development in context – family, school and community, and society – laying out the present landscape of young children’s lives in the United States, offering calls to critical theoretical and empirical concerns for guiding science, and synthesizing scientifically rigorous applied research. Bringing together this knowledge and expertise, we hope to direct the early childhood science disciplines toward the next generation of cutting edge empirical questions. Moreover, we hope this Handbook serves as a resource for stakeholders in the lives of young children from the worlds of policy and practice, our political and professional leaders who must choose how to best support young children and their families. For these audiences, the Handbook authors have carefully scrutinized our cumulative knowledge and have clarified which strategies hold the greatest promise for improving the lives of young children and their families, particularly those who are presently vulnerable and marginalized. As many of the authors eloquently note, making use of this knowledge will have lasting positive consequences for the nation’s social and economic future.

References

Child Trends Databank. (2015). Births to unmarried women. Available at: http://childtrends.org/?indicators=births-to-unmarried-women – See more at: http://childtrends.org/?indicators=births-to-unmarried-women#sthash.QTB7UBlJ.dpuf

Child Trends Databank. (2014). Immigrant children. Available at: http://childtrends.org/?indicators=immigrant-children - See more at: http://childtrends.org/?indicators=immigrant-children#sthash.YSiHX16J.dpuf

Duncan, G. J., Magnuson, K. A., & Votruba-Drzal, E. (2015). Socioeconomic status and child development. In M. H. Bornstein, T. Leventhal, & R. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology, Vol. 3: Ecological settings and processes (7th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Jäntti, M. (2009). Mobility in the United States in comparative perspectives. In S. Danziger & M. Cancian (Eds.), Changing poverty, changing policies (pp. 180–200). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

Reardon, S. F. (2011). The widening academic achievement gap between the rich and the poor: New evidence and possible explanations. In G. J. Duncan & R. J. Murnane (Eds.), Whither opportunity: Rising inequality, schools, and children’s life chances (pp. 91–116). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

Reardon, S. F., & Portilla, X. A. (2016). Recent trends in income, racial, and ethnic school readiness gaps at kindergarten entry. AERA Open, 2(3), 1–18. doi: 10.1177/2332858416657343

Shonkoff, J. P. (2010). Building a new biodevelopmental framework to guide the future of early childhood policy. Child Development, 81, 357–367.

Tseng, V. (2012). The uses of research in policy and practice. Social Policy Report, Vol. 26(2). Ann Arbor, MI: Society for Research on Child Development.

PART I

The State of Young Children in the United States

CHAPTER ONE

The State of Young Children in the United States: School Readiness

Terri J. Sabol and Robert C. Pianta

School readiness refers to the set of foundational skills, behaviors, and knowledge children display as they enter school that enable them to achieve academic success in elementary school, graduate from high school, and eventually thrive in the workforce and beyond (La Paro & Pianta, 2000; Pianta, Cox, & Snow, 2007; Zaslow, Tout, Halle, Whittaker, & Lavelle, 2010). Children prepared to adapt to the school environment when they enter kindergarten are more likely to meet academic and social demands of the classroom and succeed in school. Although there is no clear consensus on the exact definition of school readiness, it is generally agreed to include a combination of cognitive, language, executive functioning, socioemotional, behavioral, and health characteristics that cooperate to promote children’s functioning in a school setting (Boivin & Bierman, 2013; Sabol & Pianta, 2012).

In the United States, kindergarten teachers report that children on average are not fully prepared to meet the demands of the classroom environment, particularly in terms of academic skills. In 2010–2011, teachers reported that only 27% of children were proficient in reading and math at school entry based on a nationally representative sample of newly entering kindergarteners (Bernstein, West, Newsham, & Reid, 2014). Moreover, the United States has large disparities in school readiness based on children’s family backgrounds. Children from low-income backgrounds are almost a year behind at school entry in terms of their academic and language skills compared to children from higher income families (Denton Flanagan & McPhee, 2009; Halle et al., 2009).

To promote children’s school readiness, there is a large and growing movement to invest in high quality education and care of young children before they enter school. The largest share of this investment is spent on early childhood education for 3- and 4-year-old children, which includes the federally funded Head Start program as well as state-funded preschool programs. In particular, there is increasing momentum to expand access to high quality early childhood education programs (Barnett, Votruba-Drzal, Dearing, & Carolan, in this volume). At the federal level, over $6 billion dollars is spent annually for Head Start and states spend approximately $5 billion annually on public pre-kindergarten programs. This collective investment represents an increase of almost $4 billion in early education programs compared to a decade ago (Barnett, Carolan, Squires, & Clarke Brown, 2013; US Department of Health and Human Services, 2014).

The substantial investment in young children will only lead to lasting change if the early childhood interventions target the skills that matter most for children’s short- and long-term development (Pianta, Barnett, Burchinal, & Thornburg, 2009). This is predicated on the assumption that the field has a clear definition (and accompanying assessments) of school readiness that serves two critical functions: (a) it consistently predicts children’s performance over time; and (b) it accurately highlights children’s performance as well as inequalities in children’s outcomes. Without a definition and assessment that addresses these two key aims, any early childhood education intervention may only target a portion of the skills that are important for later school success.

The broad aim of this chapter is to describe: (1) school readiness in the United States in the 21st century; (2) the current framework for assessing school readiness and how this may be strengthened; (3) gaps in school readiness based on this framework; and (4) the importance of aligning early childhood interventions and policies to more comprehensive definitions of school readiness. We pay particular attention to ways in which our measurement of and policies targeting school readiness can work together to improve the life chances of children.

School Readiness in the United States in the 21st Century

Definition of school readiness

Researchers, educators, and policymakers generally agree that school readiness is a multidimensional concept that includes cognitive, executive functioning, language, socioemotional, behavioral, and health characteristics that contribute to children’s ability to adapt and thrive in school settings (Boivin & Bierman, 2013). These performance domains are correlated but typically are assessed and studied as independent indicators of school readiness and predictors of later achievement. Importantly, the guiding definitions of school readiness typically include skills and behaviors that are related to learning processes as well as learning outcomes, as opposed to the K–12 system, which often only emphasizes student outcomes based on children’s performance on academic achievement tests.

In the area of cognition, school readiness includes both acquired knowledge or skills in particular content area (such as knowing a certain number of letters) as well as learning/processing skills or how fast children acquire knowledge. In particular, there has been a growing emphasis on executive functioning skills and how these skills interact with other domains to promote learning in preschool classrooms. Executive functioning typically is defined as the set of skills and behaviors required to attain a goal, including working memory, attention control, attention shifting, and response inhibition. For young children, this means being able to resist distractions (e.g., pay attention to a teacher rather than talk with peers), inhibit dominant responses in emotional contexts (e.g., raise hand instead of talking while the teacher is reading a book), and prioritize and sequence information and hold onto it in memory (e.g., plan and carry out the series of steps required to line up for lunch; Diamond, 2006; Jacob & Parkinson, 2015).

In addition, school readiness includes children’s language skills, including their receptive language (i.e., the ability to listen and understand language) and expressive language (i.e., the ability to communicate with others using verbal language). Children’s socioemotional skills are also an important component of school readiness and include behaviors such as cooperation with teachers and peers and developing social relationships, as well behavior problems, including aggression or poor regulation. There are also a set of skills referred to as approaches to learning, which reflect children’s curiosity, flexibility, attention, persistence, and engagement. The physical health domain includes motor development, such as development of fine and gross motor skills, and healthy behavior practices. Collectively, all of these skills are theorized to affect children’s learning opportunities and their acquisition of new skills and behaviors in the classroom setting (Diamond, 2006; Jacob & Parkinson, 2015).

Most early childhood education policies recognize the importance of children’s skills across these multiple domains. The Race-to-the-Top Early Learning Challenge, a grant competition that was part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and designed to close the achievement gap, delineated the key components of school readiness that generally align to the field’s multidimensional, comprehensive definition. These essential domains of school readiness, based strongly on the framework from the National Education Goals Panel, include language and literacy development, cognition, general knowledge (e.g., early mathematics and early scientific development), and physical well-being, as well as children’s approaches to learning and executive functioning skills, and socioemotional development (Kagan, Moore, & Bradekamp, 1995; US Department of Education, 2014).

Children’s readiness for school in the United States

In the United States, children vary in terms of their readiness for school entry across domains. Results from a nationally representative study of over 8,000 newly entering kindergarten children from most recent cohort of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class of 2010–2011 (ECLS-K: 2011) indicate that only a quarter of children were deemed proficient or ready for school in reading and math based on teacher reports. Although this suggests that the majority of children were not ready for school from teachers’ perspectives, this percentage has increased over the past 10 years when compared to the same measures from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class of 1998–1999 (ECLS-K: 1999; Bassok & Latham, 2014). In the ECLS-K: 2011, teachers did report that, compared to reading and math skills, children have higher levels of proficiency in terms of motivation, engagement, and socio-emotional competency at school entry. More specifically, teachers reported that 48% of children had proficient levels of motivation and engagement in school, and 52% of children were proficient in socioemotional and executive functioning skills.

In addition, there are large disparities in achievement at school entry based on family background. In particular, trends from a nationally representative longitudinal study of approximately 14,000 children in the United States (the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Birth Cohort [ECLS-B]) demonstrate large gaps in achievement between higher income and lower income children. At age 4, children from families in the bottom income quintile performed over a standard deviation behind their peers in the top quintile on literacy and math assessments. In addition, at-risk children (defined by low-maternal education or low-income) performed lower on assessments of learning and processing of information, including working memory and cognitive flexibility, performing .85 and .76 of a standard deviation behind their more advantaged peers (Bernstein et al., 2014). Low-income children also had more behavioral problems, although the gaps were not quite as large (Bradbury, Corak, Waldfogel & Washbrook, 2011).

These income-based achievement gaps in the United States, particularly in terms of cognitive and language skills, are larger than many other OECD countries, such as Australia and Canada (Bradbury et al., 2011). In addition, the income-based achievement gap is now larger than the race-based achievement gap, which in fact narrowed over the same period (Fryer & Leavitt, 2004; Reardon, 2011; Reardon, Robinson-Cimpian, & Weathers, 2014). Currently, at kindergarten entry, the income-based achievement gap (top quartile versus bottom quartile) is almost twice the size of the Black-White achievement gap (1.39 versus 0.73 standard deviation gap; Reardon, 2011).

There are also differences in achievement between first- and second-generation immigrant children and non-immigrant children. Immigrant families have been expanding more rapidly than any other demographic group, representing close to one-fourth of the national population (Hernandez & Napierala, 2012). Although there is an increasing number of children of immigrants who come from middle- or high-income backgrounds with well-educated parents, a significant portion of immigrant children are low-income (Hernandez, Denton, Macartney, & Blanchard, 2012).

Differences in cognitive and language development between low-income children of immigrants versus native families emerge early in life and this gap grows over time. Using the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a birth cohort study of over 5,000 children born in large US cities to predominately unwed mothers, Yiu (2011) found that children of immigrants at age 3 were about half of a standard deviation behind on a standardized measure of language compared to children of native families (defined as third generation or greater). Two years later, the gap had doubled, growing to over a standard deviation in language scores.

DeFeyter and Winsler (2009) found a similar pattern in the early language and cognitive skills of immigrant children among a sample of low-income children receiving subsidies to attend childcare centers in Miami, Florida. However, they also found that children from immigrant families had a number of strengths in terms of their social skills. Preschool-aged children of immigrants (first and second generation) lagged behind their non-immigrant peers in terms of their cognitive and language skills. Yet, children from immigrant families were rated by teachers as demonstrating more initiative, self-control, and fewer behavior problems than children in non-immigrant families.

Current approaches to measuring school readiness

One challenge to characterizing school readiness and identifying disparities in skills is that school readiness is a multidimensional construct. Current approaches to assessing school readiness skills are structured around a framework of readiness-related constructs and the particular methods for measuring them. As a result, the prototypic approaches for measuring school readiness constructs often involve a multi-informant, multi-assessment approach, including a combination of teacher report, parent report, and direct assessment.

For example, the ECLS-K: 2011 included direct assessments, parent reports, and teacher reports across a range of outcomes. Direct assessments were used to assess children’s reading, mathematics, and science skills. Children’s fluid cognition or executive functioning was assessed through physical and computerized tests of cognitive flexibility and working memory. Children’s height and weight were also measured in person during data collection rounds. To complement the direct assessments, teachers evaluated children’s academic performance on language and literacy, science, and mathematical thinking. These rating scales were designed to assess both learning processes and outcomes (whereas the direct assessments were only to assess outcomes). In addition, teachers reported on the quality of teacher-child relationships and teachers and parents also reported on children’s social interactions, attentional focus, self-control, problem behaviors, and approaches to learning.

The ECLS-K: 2011’s measurement approach is common in most other large-scale studies of early childhood development in the United States, such as the National Institute of Child Helath and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (NICHD SECCYD), the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (Head Start FACES), the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics- Child Development Supplement. In addition, many local and state initiatives that screen and evaluate children’s school readiness assess children across a number of domains (although a few states that require kindergarten assessments at school entry only require measures of literacy performance; Stedron & Berger, 2010). These studies and initiatives contribute to a body of knowledge on a set of well-validated tools that can be used to assess school readiness and have provided important knowledge on the ways in which indicators of performance across multiple domains lead to varying conclusions about rates and nature of school readiness gaps in the US population.

There have been recent efforts to develop relatively simple measures that can provide population-based portraits of kindergarten readiness to inform the design of interventions and policies. The Early Development Instrument (EDI; Janus & Offord, 2007) is perhaps the best example of this approach. The EDI is a teacher-report questionnaire that focuses on five key areas of school readiness: physical health and well-being, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive development, and communication skills and general knowledge. Teachers complete the EDI for individual children in a class, but the scores are then aggregated to the population of interest, including school, neighborhood, state, or country level. This measure has established validity at the community level and has been used to identify disparities in school readiness based on family background characteristics (Janus, Brinkman, & Duku, 2011).

Recent advances in measurement techniques have led to a set of low-cost, reliable measures of children’s skills across a range of multiple domains. For example, the National Institutes of Health Toolbox, developed by experts in neurological and behavioral health measurement, includes a number of short assessments of cognition, emotion, motor function, and sensation explicitly designed for large-scale studies (Weintraub et al., 2013). The measures are all computer-based, relatively quick and easy to administer (approximately 10 minutes each), and can be used from age 3 through late adulthood. These measures present opportunities to assess children’s development across a range of domains that are important but often missing from child assessment batteries used at-scale in community or school-based applications.

There have also been advances in using observational tools within early learning settings to assess children’s early learning processes. The methods typically involve a trained observer entering the classroom and using standardized procedures for coding children’s behavior based on actual demonstration of those behaviors in the context of the classroom setting. Observational tools can be used within early childhood education programs to assess motivation (Berhenke, Miller, Brown, Seifer, & Dickstein, 2011), social behaviors with peers (Bierman et al., 2008), and engagement with teachers, peers, and tasks (Downer, Booren, Lima, Luckner, & Pianta, 2010). These observational tools typically focus less on outcomes (e.g., literacy skills) but rather the ways in which children learn and develop when they are young. This approach to assessment opens up opportunities beyond parent- or teacher-report surveys and direct standardized assessments of children’s skills and behaviors, and provides real-time observational data about how children express those skills and behaviors in a given moment. Because children’s interactions and engagement with their peers, teachers, and families are a key contributor to their development, observing these interactions provides complementary information to other assessment methods and could lead to new understanding of how children learn and develop (Downer et al., 2010).

For example, a recently developed observational tool, the Individualized Classroom Assessment Scoring System (inCLASS) uses observational methods to measure children’s engagement within the classroom setting. Modeling the multiple components of children’s engagement with teachers, peers, and tasks simultaneously, researchers found that children’s positive engagement with teachers and peers was related to improved language and literacy skills, and that children’s negative engagement in the classroom was associated with lower language, literacy, and self-regulatory skills. The findings hold even after controlling for previous performance and classroom quality (Sabol, Bohlmann, & Downer, 2013), suggesting that children’s own engagement may play an important role in early skill accrual and preparedness for school.

Relation among current measures of school readiness and long-term development

The interest in measuring and assessing school readiness derives in part from the goal of understanding the developmental roots of later behaviors and skills. Fundamental to the concept of readiness is the assumption that these skills, whatever they may be, collectively forecast success and failure over the life course, including graduating from high school, attaining a postsecondary degree, becoming productive adults, and being well-informed, lawful citizens. Longitudinal studies that examine these predictive relations provide an important check on our current conceptualization and measurement of school readiness, particularly as we attempt to strategically align interventions to early skills with strong predictive power.

The skill beget skill approach to understanding children’s development suggests that a number of children’s early skills or behaviors are indeed related to later skills or outcomes (Duncan et al., 2007; Fischer, 1980; Flavell, Miller, & Miller, 1985; Heckman & Mosso, 2014; Rogoff, 1990). Feinstein (2003) used the 1970 Birth Cohort Study of over 19,000 children in the United Kingdom and found that children with low achievement in early childhood were particularly at risk for poor adult outcomes. The prediction to adult outcomes was more pronounced at school entry compared to in toddlerhood. Children in the bottom quartile on achievement at 22 months (measured by items such as cube stacking and drawing a straight line) were much less likely to receive advanced degrees compared to children in top quartile of achievement (32% versus 43%). By 5 years old, the difference was almost 10 times greater, with only 18% of children in bottom quartile of achievement at age 5 attaining an advanced degree compared to 58% in the top quartile.

In terms of school performance, Duncan et al. (2007) conducted one of the most comprehensive studies on how children’s reading and math achievement, attention, and behavior predict elementary school achievement using six longitudinal studies of early childhood (e.g. ECLS-K: 1999, NICHD SECCYD). Results indicated that early math, reading, and attention skills were predictive of elementary school achievement, but socioemotional skills were not. Surprisingly, the effect sizes for early math skills on reading achievement were similar in magnitude to the effect of early reading skills. These findings suggest the importance of early academic and attention skills for success in elementary school.

In an even larger meta-analysis of over 3,500 studies that included over 380,000 students, Hattie (2008) found a similar pattern in which prior achievement was a strong predictor of later achievement (.67), Notably the age range at both time points was considerably larger than in Duncan et al. (2007). Yet, as the author notes, there was still a significant portion of later functioning and performance that was not explained by earlier performance (upwards of 50%). With a smaller sample of studies (n = 234), Hattie found that self-efficacy, self-concept, motivation, persistence, and conscientiousness were highly correlated with achievement, and thus may represent another important element of school readiness that has predictive power. On the other hand, in a meta-analysis on the relation among executive functioning and achievement, Jacob and Parkinson (2015) found that very few studies rigorously control for family background, suggesting that much more work is needed to establish the causal relationship between executive function and long-term achievement outcomes.

Using a child-oriented perspective to characterize school readiness

Fundamentally, readiness is a descriptor applied to a child. Clearly we need to better understand how early foundational skills are developed, but there is also a need to understand how skills interact over time to support lifelong success of that child. Importantly, although readiness skills do not exist or operate independently of one another within a particular child or group of children, most research and applications of readiness assessments treat individual skills and behaviors as the central unit of analysis and examine prediction in terms of stability and change, rather than understanding the child as the central unit of analysis (Bergman & Magnuson, 1997; Sabol & Pianta, 2012).

This conceptualization of children’s performance as a discrete set of skills could lead to a number of gaps in our understanding of school readiness. For example, we may know that early mathematical skills predict later mathematical skills, but it does little to explain how a child’s early math skills operate simultaneously with working memory, language, and social skills to foster development over time. A child-oriented approach could help elucidate how specific skills work together to shape development over time. This approach has implications for understanding the systemic nature of development by capturing the nonlinear combinations of early skills within children and how these patterns predict later achievement.

Several studies have used cluster-based profiles of children to characterize school readiness (Cooper et al., 2014; Hair, Hall, Terry-Humen, Lavelle, & Calkins, 2006; Konold & Pianta, 2005; McWayne & Bulotsky-Shearer, 2013, Quirk, Nylund-Gibson, & Furlong, 2013). For example, McWayne, Cheung, Wright, & Hahs-Vaughn (2012) used the Head Start FACES 2000 to examine patterns of school readiness for low-income children attending Head Start and how they related to children’s demographic characteristics. Latent classifications revealed three profiles based on teacher report and direct assessment of children’s cognitive skills, behavior problems, and cooperative classroom behaviors. The first profile, high average social and academic skills, was marked by high ratings and performance across social and cognitive domains. Children in this profile were more likely to be older, White, and girls. The second profile was characterized by high behavior problems and low to low-average scores across cognitive measures, with children that were younger, disabled, Black or Latino, and boys. The third profile was distinguished by average performance across all domains, with children who were more likely to be English language learners, girls, and Black or Latino. Results suggest that patterns of school readiness map onto to certain demographic subgroups.

Quirk and colleagues (2013) took a similar analytic approach, but focused on social-emotional, physical, and cognitive domains among a sample of almost 800 Latino kindergartens in California. Using teacher report of kindergarten readiness across 16 measures, they identified five profiles through latent class analysis. Three profiles were characterized by high, average, or low performance across all domains. There were also two profiles that were distinguished by a combination of high, average, and low social, cognitive, and physical skills: (1) moderate social-emotional, low cognitive, and average physical skills; and (2) low social-emotional, moderate-low cognitive. These two profiles and the low performance across all domains profile had lower academic performance in 2nd grade compared to the higher performing school readiness profiles.

The ultimate strength of child-level school readiness profiles may be in forecasting later achievement. The profiles allow researchers to measure school readiness as a multifaceted construct for a given child, with peaks and dips across different domains within individuals, and then examine within- and cross-domain associations over time. Konold & Pianta (2005) used the NICHD SECCYD to identify six profiles of functioning in typically developing 54-month-old children using an assessment battery that consisted of measures of executive functioning (both working memory and attention) and social functioning. Children were classified into six groups reflecting various peaks and valleys of relative performance, such as (a) attention problems, average social functioning, and average working memory, (b) high social competence and average working memory, and (c) high working memory and mild externalizing problems.

Sabol & Pianta (2012) then used these same school readiness profiles to forecast achievement in 5th grade. Of note were the cross-domain associations that a traditional variable-oriented approach may have missed. For example, a group of preschool-aged children with low attention, but without socioemotional problems, had strong social skills and academic performance in 5th grade in comparison to more traditional profiles that had low skills in all areas. In addition, patterns in which high social competence or high working memory were prominent, predicted high 5th-grade achievement. Results indicate that profiles that capture cross-domain interactions in performance may be particularly well suited to identifying multiple pathways to later performance and socioemotional skills.

In addition, several studies have examined associations among domains of functioning and how child-level school readiness profiles may predict later performance using a nationally representative sample (Cooper et al., 2013; Hair et al., 2006; Halle, Hair, Burchinal, Anderson, & Zaslow, 2012). Duncan and Magnuson (2011) used the ECLS-K: 1999 and examined the basic correlations among reading, math, attention, externalizing and internalizing behavior problems at the start of kindergarten. Not surprisingly, the highest correlation was between reading and math skills (.69). Yet, higher performing students were as likely to exhibit behavior problems as children who were low-performing. Children’s attention skills were also highly correlated with higher performance (.29–.41) and lower behavior problems (.36–.51). By 5th grade the correlations all grew in magnitude, suggesting that students’ academic and social skills become more connected over time.

Hair and colleagues (2006) took a person-oriented approach to examining school readiness in a nationally representative study (ECLS-K: 1999). They used five dimensions of school readiness that align to the National Education Goals Panel and Race-to-the-Top Early Learning Challenge essential domains of school readiness, – physical well-being, social-emotional development, language, cognition, and approaches to learning. Cluster analysis discriminated four profiles at kindergarten entry: positive development (above average performance on health, social-emotional, language, and cognition; 30%), social/emotional and health strengths (with low-moderate language and cognitive skills; 34%), social/emotional risk (with below average health, social-emotional, and cognitive skills; 13%), and health risk (with low language and cognitive skills and above average social-emotional skills; 22.5%). Children from the risk profiles were more likely to come from economically or socially disadvantaged families.

By 1st grade, children with positive development had the highest academic performance and highest rated social skills. Children with high social skills and average cognitive skills also performed well. Interestingly, children with health risk profile had low academic performance in elementary school. Similar to Sabol & Pianta (2012), this study identifies alternative pathways to positive outcomes, particularly for children characterized with high cognitive skills or high social skills in early childhood. These results also suggest the importance of measuring health outcomes in early childhood as well, which may place children at-risk for later academic development.

Halle et al. (2012) then examined the long-term associations between school readiness profiles and academic achievement and socioemotional skills achievement in elementary school and middle school using the ECLS-K: 1999. They used similar measures to Hair et al. (2006) and uncovered four empirically validated school readiness profiles that were distinguished by high, above average, average, or low performance on all school readiness domains. None of the profiles were characterized by high performance on some school readiness domains and low on others. Latent growth analysis indicated that children in the highest performing school readiness profile continued to outperform children in other profiles. However, children in the bottom profiles demonstrated greater improvement over time and had more rapid growth from 1st through 8th grade. These findings may be somewhat limited by measurement concerns in terms of capturing growth over time, but do demonstrate that children arrive at school with different patterns of school readiness competencies.

It is hard to draw comparisons across the studies of school readiness that use a person-oriented approach given the variation in measures included and the population studied. However, results suggest that person-oriented approaches may elucidate patterns of school readiness that would not be identified in traditional variable-oriented approaches. Moreover, results suggest that children’s performance in elementary school and middle school can be predicted by children’s patterns of school readiness, again confirming the importance of early skills for later development and outcomes.

The importance capturing children’s skills across multiple dimensions has significant implications for how we define and measure gaps across a diverse range of children. Typical approaches to identifying achievement gaps typically do not measure children’s skills across multiple domains simultaneously and instead focus on a set of early skills, such as achievement tests, that may only tell part of the story in terms of forecasting long-term outcomes. Thus, there is the potential that we are missing important strengths and weaknesses in children’s early skills and behaviors from a diverse range of outcomes. Future work may attempt to characterize children’s school readiness gaps using a more parsimonious, holistic approach. In addition, school readiness profiles need to be replicated across multiple datasets that represent the range of children’s skills and backgrounds, in order to determine the utility and validity of this approach.

Measuring School Readiness in a Policy Context

Defining and measuring school readiness is challenging. Yet, the increased emphasis on school readiness within policy contexts highlights the critical need of getting the definition right particularly when public preschool for low-income children is promoted as a gap-closing investment and when school districts are considering widespread implementation of kindergarten assessments. In the coming years, it will become even more important to expand the conceptualization and strengthen the measurement to include the components of children’s early skills and functioning that accurately depict disparities as well as forecasting later performance. As local, state, and federal policies attempt to mitigate disparities through various policies and programs, measures of children’s school readiness may be increasingly used as benchmark of the success of those policies.

The K–12 system provides an example of how policy can lead to a reductionist view of student achievement and development, but can also spur action. The No Child Left Behind legislation mandated the improvement of student achievement as measured through test score gains. All states were required to develop state tests to be used in annual testing, focused primarily on 3rd through 8th grade student performance. The emphasis on student achievement tests led to a somewhat myopic focus from schools on improving the skills that directly related to student test scores and less of a focus on other subjects or skills that may promote later outcomes. On the other hand, it provided a common metric and language to track and monitor student progress and also provided an opportunity to examine the schools that have lower or higher achievement.

The focus on student achievement has trickled down to kindergartners. In the Race-to-the-Top Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC), states were judged on the basis of whether they collected data on school readiness at kindergarten entry. The RTT-ELC delineated that the kindergarten assessment tool should cover all of the essential domains of school readiness. The goal of the kindergarten assessments was to help states understand the status of children’s learning at kindergarten entry, how early learning programs such as state-funded pre-kindergarten programs may be improved to strengthen children’s early skills, and plan for how best to serve children in the K–12 system (Scott-Little, Bruner, Schultz & Maxwell, 2013). As a result of this funding, more states than ever use kindergarten assessment tools. In 2010, 25 states had established a kindergarten entry assessment and 21 required universal assessment of kindergarten students (Stedron & Berger, 2010).

Thus far, school readiness assessments have been used primarily for descriptive purposes and have only played a small to moderate role in higher stakes contexts, such as states’ preschool accountability systems (separate from NCLB), Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS), but that may change in the near future. To date, QRIS have primarily focused on measuring classroom level inputs, such as the global classroom environment and class size, to rate preschool quality across states. However, children’s performance is increasingly being integrated into preschool ratings. For example, in 2010 only 11 states (out of 25; 44%) used child assessments as a way to determine preschool program quality. By 2014, that number had almost doubled to 21 states (out of 38 states; 55%), suggesting that states are moving in the direction of using school readiness as one indicator of program quality (QRIS Compendium, 2014).

School readiness may also increasingly be used in even more high stakes settings. For example, in Chicago, the Mayor recently proposed funding pre-kindergarten programs using $17 million in social-impact bonds. Lenders will only be repaid if students demonstrate an increase in school readiness for kindergarten, among other outcomes, such as lowering the need for special-education programs. Children’s school readiness will be used to determine in part how much money the city pays for pre-kindergarten and whether private lenders reclaim their investment. This approach has been used in Utah as well, and could represent the growing interest in using school readiness as a marker of the effectiveness of early childhood education programs.

Future work focused on strong, consistent measurement will help to build conceptual clarity and provide a common language that can be used by researchers, teachers, parents, and the general public to track children’s progress. There are a number of efforts underway to address this goal, such as the application of the Early Development Instrument (EDI; a population-based school readiness measurement tool), creating a common kindergarten entry assessment, and accompanying K-3 formative assessments. In addition, researchers and educators are currently developing common early learning and development standards from birth to kindergarten entry that are aligned to the Common Core State Standards.

Conceptual clarity on school readiness is predicated on the development of measurement tools that are culturally relevant for children from diverse backgrounds that capture the nonlinear relationships of multiple domains of functioning. Recent advances in measurement provide opportunities to incorporate easy-to-use tools across multiple domains, which is exemplified in the ECLS-K: 2011. However, much more work needs to be done to examine the predictive validity of individual measures, as well as how patterns of school readiness across multiple domains are associated with longer term outcomes.

Overall, policy should drive better assessment. For instance, if programs do not assess how kids are performing in math, it is challenging to know how to align programming to those skills. Improved assessment of school readiness can also highlight strengths in children’s early skills, as well as disparities. This in turn can inform program evaluation and planning, as well as mobilize communities around the needs of their children.

When children enter kindergarten, the whole child enters, not just individual behaviors and skills. The field has made impressive gains around characterizing and measuring children’s development across multiple domains and how these skills operate in concert over time to produce learning gains in the short term. Further work may examine the long-term predictive validity of this child-oriented approach and how policies and programs can target these skills to support the lifelong success of children.

References

Barnett, W. S., Carolan, M. E., Squires, J. H., & Clarke Brown, K. (2013). The state of preschool 2013: State preschool yearbook. New Brunswick, NJ: National Institute for Early Education Research.

Bassok, D., & Latham, S. (2014). Kids today: Changes in school-readiness in an early childhood era. Paper presented at the meeting for the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Bergman, L. R., & Magnusson, D. (1997). A person-oriented approach in research on developmental psychopathology. Development and Psychopathology, 9(02), 291–319.

Berhenke, A., Miller, A. L., Brown, E., Seifer, R., & Dickstein, S. (2011). Observed emotional and behavioral indicators of motivation predict school readiness in Head Start graduates. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 26(4), 430–441.

Bernstein S., West, J., Newsham, R., & Reid, M. (2014). Kindergartners’ skills at school entry: An analysis of the ECLS-K. New York, NY: Mathematica Policy Research.

Bierman, K. L., Domitrovich, C. E., Nix, R. L., Gest, S. D., Welsh, J. A., Greenberg, M. T., … Gill, S. (2008). Promoting academic and social-emotional school readiness: The Head Start REDI Program. Child Development, 79(6), 1802–1817. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2008.01227.x

Boivin, M., & Bierman, K. L. (Eds.). (2013). Promoting school readiness and early learning: Implications of developmental research for practice. New York, NY: Guilford Publications.

Bradbury, B., Corak, M., Waldfogel, J., & Washbrook, E. (2011). Inequality during the early years: Child outcomes and readiness to learn in Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, and United States (No. 6120). Retrieved from http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:101:1-201111303525

Cooper, B. R., Moore, J. E., Powers, C. J., Cleveland, M., & Greenberg, M. T. (2014). Patterns of early reading and social skills associated with academic success in elementary school. Early Education and Development, 25(8), 1248–1264.

De Feyter, J. J., & Winsler, A. (2009). The early developmental competencies and school readiness of low-income, immigrant children: Influences of generation, race/ethnicity, and national origins. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 24(4), 411–431.

Denton Flanagan, K., & McPhee, C. (2009). The children born in 2001 at kindergarten entry: First findings from the kindergarten data collections of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) (NCES 2010-005). Washington, DC: US Department of Education.

Diamond, A. (2006). The early development of executive functions. In E. Bialystok & F. I. M. Craik (Eds.), Lifespan cognition: Mechanisms of change (pp. 70–96). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Downer, J. T., Booren, L. M., Lima, O. K., Luckner, A. E., & Pianta, R. C. (2010). The Individualized Classroom Assessment Scoring System (inCLASS): Preliminary reliability and validity of a system for observing preschoolers’ competence in classroom interactions. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 25(1), 1–16. doi:10.1016/j.ecresq.2009.08.004

Duncan, G. J., Dowsett, C. J., Claessens, A., Magnuson, K., Huston, A. C., Klebanov, P., … Japel, C. (2007). School readiness and later achievement. Developmental Psychology, 43(6), 1428.

Duncan, G. J., & Magnuson, K. (2011). The nature and impact of early achievement skills, attention skills, and behavior problems. In G. J. Duncan & R. J. Murnane (Eds.), Whither opportunity? Rising inequality, schools, and children’s life chances (pp. 47–69). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

Feinstein, L. (2003). Inequality in the early cognitive development of British children in the 1970 cohort. Economica, 70, 73–97. doi: 10.1111/1468-0335.t01-1-00272

Fischer, K. W. (1980). A theory of cognitive development: The control and construction of hierarchies of skills. Psychological Review, 87(6), 477–531.

Flavell, J. H., Miller, P. H., & Miller, S. A. (1985). Cognitive development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Fryer Jr., R. G., & Levitt, S. D. (2004). Understanding the black-white test score gap in the first two years of school. Review of Economics and Statistics, 86(2), 447–464.

Hair, E., Halle, T., Terry-Humen, E., Lavelle, B., & Calkins, J. (2006). Children’s school readiness in the ECLS-K: Predictions to academic, health, and social outcomes in first grade. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 21(4), 431–454.

Halle, T., Forry, N., Hair, E., Perper, K., Wandner, L., Wessel, J., & Vick, J. (2009). Disparities in early learning and development: Lessons from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birth Cohort (ECLS-B). Washington, DC: Child Trends.

Halle, T. G., Hair, E. C., Burchinal, M., Anderson, R. & Zaslow, M. (2012) In the Running for Successful Outcomes: Exploring the evidence for thresholds of school readiness. Washington, DC: US Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. Retrieved from http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/13/IntheRunningtechnicalreport/rpt.pdf

Hattie, J. (2008). Visible learning: A synthesis of meta-analyses relating to achievement. New York, NY: Routledge.

Heckman, J. J., & Mosso, S. (2014). The Economics of Human Development and Social Mobility (No. w19925). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.

Hernandez, D. J., Denton, N. A., Macartney, S., & Blanchard, V. L. (2012). Children in immigrant families: Demography, policy, and evidence for the immigrant paradox. In C. G. Coll & A. Marks (Eds.) The immigrant paradox in children and adolescents: Is becoming American a developmental risk? (pp. 17–36). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Hernandez, D. J., & Napierala, J. S. (2012). Children of immigrant families: Essential to America’s future. New York, NY: Foundation for Child Development:

Jacob, R., & Parkinson, J. (2015). The potential for school-based interventions that target executive function to improve academic achievement: A review. Report submitted to US Department of Education, Washington, DC.

Janus, M., Brinkman, S. A., & Duku, E. K. (2011). The school entry gap: Socioeconomic, family, and health factors associated with children's school readiness to learn. Early Education and Development, 18(3), 375–403.

Janus, M., & Offord, D. R. (2007). Development and psychometric properties of the Early Development Instrument (EDI): A measure of children’s school readiness. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 39(1), 1–12.

Kagan, S. L., Moore, E., & Bradekamp, S. (Eds.) (1995). Reconsidering children’s early development and learning: Toward common views and vocabulary. Washington, DC: National Education Goals Panel Goal 1 Technical Planning Group.

Konold, T. R., & Pianta, R. C. (2005). Empirically-derived, person-oriented patterns of school readiness in typically-developing children: Description and prediction to first-grade achievement. Applied Developmental Science, 9(4), 174–187.

La Paro, K. M., & Pianta, R. C. (2000). Predicting children’s competence in the early school years: A meta-analytic review. Review of Educational Research, 70(4), 443–484.

McWayne, C. M., & Bulotsky-Shearer, R. J. (2013). Identifying family and classroom practices associated with stability and change of social-emotional readiness for a national sample of low-income children. Research in Human Development, 10(2), 116–140.

McWayne, C. M., Cheung, K., Wright, L. E. G., & Hahs-Vaughn, D. L. (2012). Patterns of school readiness among head start children: Meaningful within-group variability during the transition to kindergarten. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104(3), 862–878.

Pianta, R. C., Barnett, W. S., Burchinal, M., & Thornburg, K. R. (2009). The effects of preschool education: What we know, how public policy is or is not aligned with the evidence base, and what we need to know. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 10(2), 49–88.

Pianta, R. C., Cox, M. J., & Snow, K. L. (2007).School readiness and the transition to kindergarten in the era of accountability. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing.

QRIS Compendium. (2014). A catalog and comparison of quality rating and improvement systems. Retrieved from http://qriscompendium.org/

Quirk, M., Nylund-Gibson, K., & Furlong, M. (2013). Exploring patterns of Latino/a children's school readiness at kindergarten entry and their relations with grade 2 achievement. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 28(2), 437–449.

Reardon, S. F. (2011). The widening academic achievement gap between the rich and the poor: New evidence and possible explanations. In R. Murnane & G. Duncan (Eds.), Whither opportunity? Rising inequality and the uncertain life chances of low-income children (pp. 91–116). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

Reardon, S. F., Robinson-Cimpian, J. P., & Weathers, E. S. (2014). Patterns and trends in racial/ethnic and socioeconomic academic achievement gaps. In H. A. Ladd & M. E. Goertz (Eds.), Handbook of research in education finance and policy (pp. 497–516). New York, NY: Routledge.

Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Sabol, T. J., Bohlmann, N., & Downer, J. (2013). The Role of Observed Children’s Engagement in Preschool Classrooms on School Readiness. Paper presented at the Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Research Conference, Seattle, WA.

Sabol, T. J., & Pianta, R. C. (2012). Patterns of school readiness forecast achievement and socioemotional development at the end of elementary school. Child Development, 83(1), 282–299.

Scott-Little, C., Bruner, C., Schultz, T., & Maxwell, K. (2013). Kindergarten Entry Assessment Discussion Guide 2013. Retrieved from http://www.buildinitiative.org/WhatsNew/ViewArticle/tabid/96/ArticleId/662/Kindergarten-Entry-Assessment-Discussion-Guide-2013.aspx

Stedron, J. M., & Berger, A. (2010). State approaches to school readiness assessment. Washington, DC: National Conference of State Legislatures.

US Department of Education. (2014, November). Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) Program. Retrieved from http://www.ed.gov/early-learning/elc-draft-summary/definitions

US Department of Health and Human Services. (2014, November). Head Start fact sheet: Head Start program facts fiscal year 2013. Retrieved from http://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc/data/factsheets/2013-hs-program-factsheet.html

Weintraub, S., Dikmen, S. S., Heaton, R. K., Tulsky, D. S., Zelazo, P. D., Bauer, P. J., … Gershon, R. C. (2013). Cognition assessment using the NIH Toolbox. Neurology, 80, S54–S64.

Yiu, J. (2011). The school readiness of the children of immigrants in the United States: The role of families, childcare and neighborhoods (Fragile Families Working Paper No. WP-11-11-FF). Princeton, NJ: Bendheim-Thoman Center for Research on Child Wellbeing.

Zaslow, M., Tout, K., Halle, T., Whittaker, J. V., & Lavelle, B. (2010). Toward the identification of features of effective professional development for early childhood educators. Washington DC: Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development, US Department of Education.

CHAPTER TWO

The State of Young Children in the United States: A Developmental Psychopathology Perspective on the Mental Health of Preschool Children

Susan B. Campbell

Over the last several decades there has been a growing interest in identifying problem behaviors in young children and understanding how child characteristics interact with risk and protective factors in the child’s environment to facilitate or undermine optimal development (Campbell, 2002; Sameroff, 2009; Shonkoff, 2010). One important goal of this work, both theoretical and empirical, is to inform prevention and early intervention programs meant to forestall the emergence of long-term and potentially serious emotional and behavior disorders of middle childhood and adolescence (e.g., Shaw, Dishion, Supplee, Gardner, & Arnds, 2006), many of which have their roots or precursors in early childhood (e.g., Moffitt, Caspi, Dickson, Silva, & Stanton, 1996; Rutter, Kim-Cohen, & Maughan, 2006). This emphasis on developmental process and the early identification of problem behaviors has stimulated several important and developmentally-informed longitudinal studies of community (e.g., Lavigne, LeBailly, Hopkins, Gouze, & Binns, 2009; NICHD Early Child Care Research Network [ECCRN], 2002) and high risk samples (e.g., Campbell, Pierce, March, Ewing, & Szumowski, 1994; Olson, Sameroff, Kerr, Lopez, & Wellman, 2005; Shaw et al., 2006; Shaw et al., 1998) that begin in infancy or the preschool period. These studies have added to our understanding of factors associated with the onset and developmental course of problem behaviors first identified in early childhood.

The move to identify problems earlier and earlier, however, has also had some negative consequences. When children’s difficult behaviors are viewed from an adevelopmental and decontextualized lens, explosive or withdrawn behaviors that often signal age appropriate struggles with developmental tasks or young children’s attempts to adapt to challenging environmental circumstances may be mislabeled as disorders (Campbell, 2002; Sroufe, 1990, 1997) by parents, teachers, or medical professionals without a background in early development. An especially worrisome side effect of this trend is the alarming increase in the use of psychoactive medications prescribed to very young children (Fontanella, Hiance, Phillips, Bridge, & Campo, 2014; Zito et al., 2000; Zito et al., 2007) who are rarely given a mental health or developmental assessment or offered psychosocial interventions. For example, Fontanella et al. (2014) reviewed Medicaid claims in Ohio from 2002–2008 and reported that young children (ages 2–5) who were treated with psychotropic medications for behavioral and emotional problems were likely to be boys, to be living in poverty, many in rural areas, and to have received treatment from non-specialty personnel in primary care settings, rather than from a child psychiatrist; moreover, the majority of these children (over 70%) did not receive a mental health assessment prior to receiving a prescription for medication. Zito and colleagues (2000; 2007) have consistently raised concerns about the off-label use of medications for young children who are at high risk for adverse drug effects. This situation is likely to reflect the attempts of desperate parents and overworked professionals to cope with behavior problems in an era of shrinking resources. Parents living in poverty and primary care providers in rural and inner-city areas lacking services may be unaware of or unable to access more age-appropriate psychosocial interventions to address family needs.

Problem behaviors in young children, from roughly 18 months to 5 years, are often signs of developmental perturbations and the emergence of new skills that involve the reorganization of child and parent behavior and expectations. The emergence of skilled unsupported walking and the development of language early in the second year are two obvious examples of new skills that dramatically change the child’s ability to interact with the world and consequently the demands on parents. Once children begin to walk and talk, they are more likely to get into things as they move around independently and explore their environment, and they are more likely to say no to parent requests. Most parents will welcome and support these developmental advances, but parents of a very active or demanding toddler, especially if they themselves are highly stressed and overwhelmed, may attempt to restrict exploration and mastery, leading to early parent–child conflict. Thus, common problem behaviors may arise when young children show age-related and transient adjustment difficulties associated with developmental advances and challenges (e.g., autonomy-seeking) or with a stressful (even normative) life event such as the birth of a sibling (e.g., tantrums, regressive behavior) or entry into child care (e.g., separation anxiety, noncompliance). For most children, these problem behaviors will abate, especially in the context of supportive and child-centered parenting (Campbell, 2002; Laible & Thompson, 2007). However, some parents may react to these developmental advances with harsh control, inappropriate or inconsistent limits, and anger, potentially inaugurating a cycle of coercive toddler–parent interaction that is a risk factor for persistent problems (Smith et al., 2014). Thus, in a small proportion of cases, problems that emerge in toddlerhood or the preschool period may become entrenched and even worsen with development, presaging more chronic adjustment difficulties (e.g., Campbell, Shaw, & Gilliom, 2000; Moffitt et al., 1996; Pierce, Ewing, & Campbell, 1999; Shaw et al., 1998).

A developmental psychopathology framework places children’s problems into a developmental, family, and ecological context (Bronfenbrenner, 1977; Cicchetti & Cohen, 1995; Cummings, Davies, & Campbell, 2000; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000), while also considering the ongoing transactions between the child, parents, and the wider social environment (Sameroff, 2009). This means that young children’s problems must be considered from the perspective of the child’s functioning across domains including language and cognitive development, and social and emotional competence. Parenting