Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

In the United States, early childhood education is a key policy lever to expand opportunities for low-income families (e.g., Yoshikawa et al., 2013). Regular, daily attendance gives children the necessary exposure to the academic and developmental programming needed to achieve gains, and relatively small increases in children’s attendance can lead to significant advances in child development (e.g., Ready, 2010). Head Start, the nation’s largest federally funded early childhood education program, has made children’s school attendance a high priority, requiring minimum monthly center attendance rates of 85%. Yet national center attendance averages remain at 75% despite policies to improve attendance at the individual and center level. An innovative approach to boost children’s attendance is to promote parent social capital and center engagement (Small, 2009).

This study examines the impacts of an experiment in three Head Start centers in a large northern city which had made extensive efforts in the past two years to improve children’s attendance with very limited success. During the 2013-2014 school year, students were randomly assigned to one of two treatment conditions in addition to meeting Head Start guidelines: (1) a geography group (n=103), where children were placed in classrooms with other children from their neighborhood of residence; and (2) a geography plus attendance partner group (n=103), where children were assigned based on geography and with the additional option to voluntarily pair for the purposes of improving children’s attendance. We compared impacts to a control group (n=101).

Our impact analysis shows that parents who were offered both treatments had greater gains in their social networks and were more willing to ask other parents for help compared to parents whose children were assigned to classrooms based on a business-as-usual approach. Our results also suggest that the program was effective in improving children’s attendance among a low-income population. A 4-5% percentage point increase in attendance during a time when average attendance typically dips below 75% is encouraging, especially given the low-cost, low-intensity nature of the intervention. Follow up explanatory analyses of focus groups with parents and staff suggested that parents’ level of connection and trust, self-generated partnership strategies, and commitment to their children’s education may be factors by which parents’ social capital expands and children’s attendance improves.

References

Ready, D. D. (2010). Socioeconomic disadvantage, school attendance, and early cognitive development: The differential effects of school exposure. Sociology of Education, 83(4), 271-286. Doi: 10.1177/0038040710383520

Small, M. L. (2009). Unanticipated gains: Origins of network inequality in everyday life. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Yoshikawa, H., Weiland, C., Brooks-Gunn, J., Burchinal, M. R., Espinosa, L. M., Gormley, W. T., & Zaslow, M. J. (2013). Investing in our future: The evidence base on preschool education. New York, NY: The Foundation for Child Development. Retrieved from https://www.fcd-us.org