The buzz in the early learning community in recent days was about a new study that found efforts by states to collect early childhood data were incomplete, which made it hard for policymakers to measure programs’ success.
The collection of early childhood data is rarely coordinated – Pennsylvania is the only state that can link its program and site-level data across all of its programs, according to the report from the Early Childhood Data Collaborative. While the analysis found states collect a lot of information it is often divided by funding stream and isolated from other related data. And there are gaps in data collection.
This is important because it means policymakers don’t have the information they need to decide if early learning efforts are effective. Essentially, they can’t answer fundamental questions about early childhood programs, including:
“Only a handful of states have conducted rigorous evaluations of their pre-k programs to assess their effectiveness and inform continuous improvement, and even fewer are able to track children’s development over time and examine whether policies and practice at the elementary level are effectively building on the gains made in pre-k. Further, most states don’t have access to data about program and workforce quality that help decision-makers understand the factors and environments that foster learning and development,” – Pre-K Now, one of the partners in the collaborative, said in a statement. (Read more about the collaborative here.)
Washington State is making progress on this issue - it secured a three-year grant from the Department of Education last year to expand its longitudinal data system that covers preschool through higher education, known as P-20. The project is among the top 11 early education priorities in Washington this year.
Thanks to Early Years for highlighting this study.