Long-Term Study of Adults Who Received High-quality Early Childhood Care and Education Shows Economic and Social Gains, Less Crime

WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 /U.S. Newswire/ -- A landmark, long-term study of the effects of high-quality early care and education on low-income three- and four-year-olds shows that adults at age 40 who participated in a preschool program in their early years have higher earnings, are more likely to hold a job, have committed fewer crimes, and are more likely to have graduated from high school. The High/Scope Perry Preschool study was conducted by the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation. Overall, the study documented return to society of more than a $17 for every tax dollar invested in the early care and education program.

"These findings can be expected of any Head Start, state preschool, or child care program similar to the program High/Scope coordinated and then studied," said Larry Schweinhart, president of the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation. "Our teachers were well-qualified, they served no more than eight children from low-income families at a time, they visited these families as part of the program to discuss their child's development, and the classes operated daily for children three and four years old."

What makes the study unique is that the children in the study were randomly assigned either to receive the High/Scope Perry Preschool program or to receive no comparable program and were then tracked throughout their lives to age 40. At earlier stages, High/Scope Educational Research Foundation staff studied these same groups of children every year from age three to age 11, and again at ages 14, 15, 19, and 27.

Among the study's major findings in the educational area are:

• More of the group who received high-quality early education graduated from high school than the non-program group (65 percent vs. 45 percent), particularly females (84 percent vs. 32 percent);

• Fewer females who received high-quality early education than non-program females required treatment for mental impairment (8 percent vs. 35 percent) or had to repeat a grade (21 percent vs. 41 percent); and

• The group who received high-quality early education on average outperformed the non-program group on various intellectual and language tests during their early childhood years, on school achievement tests between ages nine and 14, and on literacy tests at ages 19 and 27.

"The preschool program's long-term effects were due to its shorter-term effects on children's educational commitment and success," said report coauthor Jeanne Montie, senior research associate at the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation.

The study, begun in 1962, identified 123 young African American children living in poverty and assessed to be at high risk of school failure in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The researchers randomly assigned 58 of the children to a high-quality early care and education setting; the rest received no preschool program.

Among the study's major findings in the economic area are:

• More of the group who received high-quality early education than the non-program group were employed at age 40 (76 percent vs. 62 percent);

• The group who received high-quality early education had median annual earnings more than $5,000 higher than the non-program group ($20,800 vs. $15,300);

• More of the group who received high-quality early education owned their own homes; and

• More of the group who received high-quality early education had a savings account than the non-program group (78 percent vs. 50 percent).

In the High/Scope Perry Preschool program, children participated in their own education, by planning, carrying out and reviewing their own activities as part of their learning experience.

One of the reviewers of the study, Nobel-Prize-winning University of Chicago economist James J. Heckman, said, "This report substantially bolsters the case for early interventions in disadvantaged populations. More than 35 years after they received an enriched preschool program, the Perry Preschool participants achieve much greater success in social and economic life than their counterparts who are randomly denied treatment."

Among the study's major findings in the crime prevention area are:

• The group who received high-quality early education had significantly fewer arrests than the non-program group (36 percent vs. 55 percent arrested five times or more); and

• Significantly fewer members of the group who received high-quality early care than the non-program group were ever arrested for violent crimes (32 percent vs. 48 percent), property crimes (36 percent vs. 58 percent), or drug crimes (14 percent vs. 34 percent).

"This study proves that investing in high quality pre-kindergarten can make every family in America safer from crime and violence. Law enforcement leaders know that to win the war on crime, we need to be as willing to guarantee our kids space in a pre-kindergarten program as we are to guarantee a criminal a prison cell," said Sanford Newman, president of Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, an anti-crime organization made up of 2,000 police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors and victims of violence.
 

Copies of "Summary, Conclusions, and Frequently Asked Questions From the High/Scope Perry Preschool Study Through Age 40" are available at http://www.highscope.org/Research/PerryProject/perrymain.htm

Fifty-state data on state support for preschool programs can be found at http://www.nieer.org/yearbook

Visit http://www.earlycare.org for additional links.