Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Success of any early childhood initiative on the targeted intended early developmental outcomes hinges on parents’ decisions and engagement. Though many programs address a variety of personal and environmental disruptors, from structural (e.g. providing transportation, child care, food, conflicts in work schedules) to psychosocial (Brookes, Summers, Thornburg, Ispa, & Lane, 2006), even motivated parents with good intentions do not follow through with early education offerings and recommendations. Some interventions for behavior problems show only 30 to 48 percent of targeted families participating (Garvey et al.2006; Heinrichs et al.2005; Baker et al. 2011) and some preschool based educational programs report that less than half of parents attend workshops and similar offerings (Dawson-McClure et al., 2015; Mendez at al., 2009). Why is parent engagement in early education initiatives low and erratic even when parents are well informed, and educational programs are free and accessible?

Parents’ day to day, and in the moment, availability of attention and energy, intersect with parenting, and responsiveness and follow through with programs; these elements of decision making can get pulled elsewhere as parents juggle the demands of non-child rearing responsibilities (Mullainathan & Shafir, 2013). This pull may be particularly heightened among low income parents, who are the targets of early preventive and education initiatives, as the daily financial stressors of their lives can place high cognitive and emotional demands on attention and self-control in the present (thus, increasing their cognitive load), with little economic or social cushion to support recovery (Gennetian, Darling & Aber, 2016; Mullainathan & Shafir, 2013).

Using insights from behavioral economics, we focus on three ways that parents can be redirected or can miscalculate their decisions in the context of their (and, their child’s) involvement in early childhood education: attention, estimation or judgment of relevance of activities or services for their children, and calculation of future benefits of the type and amount of time invested in their children and early childhood programming. Three behaviorally informed design enhancements are applied and experimentally tested with the Getting Ready for School (GRS) program, a play-based early education program that supports children’s reading, math and self-regulation skills. A total of 257 children across 14 classrooms in 4 Head Start Centers in New York City participated. Randomization occurred at both the child (or family) level and the classroom level. Compared to GRS as usual, the enhanced package of personalized invitations, child-friendly activity planners, text-message reminders, and commitment reinforcement increased parent attendance to GRS events and the time parents spent with children on educational activities outside of the classroom. Parents of children in the experimental group were 15 percentage points (or, 40 percent) more likely to attend the beginning-of-year kick-off meeting; returned, on average, twice as many activity trackers to their child’s teacher; and spent a half hour more per week on GRS activities at home. The findings suggest change in parents’ in-the-moment decisions as well as cascading effects on parenting habits as parents in the GRS-BE group were more likely to attend GRS workshops without any additional BE reinforcement.