Quality early learning is a powerful poverty-fighting tool that helps narrow achievement gaps among children. Researchers spend a lot of time focusing on those gaps in preschool, but there is not much work on these divides in babies and toddlers, a new report says.
A Child Trends report begins to change this with a study of data on 11,000 children that shows the achievement gap - differences in cognitive skills, behavior and health – actually shows up as early as nine months.
Researchers discovered many of these gaps widened by the time children were two years old. Poverty and low education among mothers were the two most prevalent risk factors, though they found gaps in two other demographic areas: racial/ethnic minority status and non-English home language.
This is a major finding for the early learning community because it’s further evidence of the importance of quality infant and toddler care. If the achievement gap starts so early, quality child care has to start as early.
This important study underscores a key truth: if a price tag could be put on future workforce productivity in our country, the growing number of children in poverty is very expensive. Very soon, the line of credit we have been using by not investing wisely in children from an early age is going to bankrupt us, – Marian Wright Edelman, head of the Children’s Defense Fund, wrote at Change.org on Friday, “Leaving the Littlest Ones Behind.”
The report also offers ideas on how to deal with these early achievement gaps, and one of them is “Improve the Quality of Early Care Settings.”
Two promising ways to address the quality of early care environments would be to focus on curriculum development and professional development within both home-based and center-based settings that serve infants and toddlers. – “Disparities in Early Learning and Development: Lessons from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Birth Cohort.
The report was released by Child Trends last summer and funded by the Council of Chief State School Officers. It is worth checking out.