Tag Archives: Child Outcomes

Federal Report Recommends Teaching Self-Regulation in Schools

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12/6/16

A new federal report recommends that schools emphasize building children’s “self-regulation” skills in order to increase opportunities for student success in a number of areas. The recommendation is one of several in the report, the fourth in a series on self-regulation research and practice from the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).

Researchers have zeroed in on the importance of self-regulation skills, which allow children to manage their thoughts and feelings, control impulses, and problem-solve.

“Self-regulation affects wellbeing across the lifespan, from mental health and emotional wellbeing to academic achievement, physical health, and socioeconomic success,” said Desiree Murray, associate director of research at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute and lead author of the report. “Unfortunately, prolonged or pronounced stress and adversity, including poverty and trauma, can delay children’s self-regulation development.”

Murray said the good news is research shows that interventions can improve outcomes for children from backgrounds of risk and adversity. Her research team, which includes Duke Center for Child and Family Policy’s Katie Rosanbalm and Christina Christopoulos, recommend embedding a focus on self-regulation in schools and other settings.

“For optimal self-regulation, a child or adolescent needs to have a full bucket of skills and supports on which to draw,” Murray said. “There are two crucial periods when children are developing their self-regulation skills the most—in early childhood and early adolescence—when teachers and parents can help them build the skills they need for the rest of their lives.”

Murray said many self-regulation interventions are designed for use in schools.

“Schools are an ideal place for interventions because there is opportunity to build skills in a cohesive approach from preschool through secondary school and because of the potential power of shared learning with peers,” she said. “Interventions in schools can impact the culture and climate in a way that benefits all students.”

According to the report, strengthening self-regulation can be thought of like teaching literacy. Similar to literacy, self-regulation develops with simpler skills first, which build upon one another.

Murray and her team outline a comprehensive approach to the development of self-regulation, which includes teaching skills through repeated practice and frequent feedback in a supportive context. They suggest providing universal interventions across childhood and into early adulthood, with a strong emphasis on teaching caregivers (including teachers and other school staff) how to support children.  She said the keys to this support are warm and responsive relationships, paired with positive discipline and consistency.

The report also recommends providing more intensive intervention to children who are experiencing self-regulation difficulties. In 12 elementary schools, Murray’s team is currently delivering and studying a small-group pull-out program teaching socio-emotional skills from “The Incredible Years.”

“Some children and youth may need additional supports, such as those provided by ‘Incredible Years’ programs,” Murray said. “These and other interventions may be particularly beneficial for youth who live in adversity, increasing children’s resilience to the negative effects of stress.”

Murray’s team based their report’s recommendations on two comprehensive reviews of research. “We capitalized on important recent findings from developmental neuroscience, and looked at a wide range of interventions that have been evaluated in the last 25 years,” she said.

The Office of Planning, Research & Evaluation in the DHHS’s Administration for Children and Families commissioned the report. Murray and Rosanbalm currently are developing a series of briefs to support use of their recommendations for different age groups, including new professional development for practitioners in the field.

Source: FPG Child Development Institute

Available at: http://fpg.unc.edu/node/8716

Children in Poverty

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12/8/2016

In 2010, more than one in five children (22 percent) lived in families with incomes below the poverty line, the highest level since 1993; by 2014, this had fallen to 21 percent. Black and Hispanic children, children living in single-mother families, and children under five are even more likely to be poor.

Importance

Since the mid-1970s, children under 18 have been much more likely than adults to be poor.[1] Being raised in poverty (defined as income of $24,008 or less in 2014, for a family of four with two children) [2] places children at higher risk for a wide range of problems. Research indicates that poor children are disproportionately exposed to factors that may impair brain development [3] and affect cognitive, social, and emotional functioning. These risks include environmental toxins, inadequate nutrition, maternal depression, parental substance abuse, trauma and abuse, violent crime, divorce, low-quality child care, and decreased cognitive stimulation (stemming in part from exposure, in infancy, to a more restricted vocabulary[4],[5],[6]

While determining causality is complex in this context, experiencing poverty is also related to increased risks of negative health outcomes for young children and adolescents. When compared with all children, poor children are more likely to have poor health and chronic health conditions.[7] Children in poor families are more likely to be born premature and at a low birth weight, and to develop later illnesses, such as respiratory diseases. As adolescents, poor youth are more likely to suffer from mental health problems, such as personality disorders and depression. Moreover, in comparison to all adolescents, those raised in poverty engage in higher rates of risky health-related behaviors, including smoking and early initiation of sexual activity.[8],[9],[10]

Aside from physical and mental health, poverty in childhood and adolescence is associated with a higher risk for poorer cognitive and academic outcomes, lower school attendance, lower reading and math test scores, increased distractibility, and higher rates of grade failure and early high school dropout.[11],[12] Poor children are also more likely than other children to have externalizing and other behavior problems, or emotional problems,[13],[14] and are more likely to engage in delinquent behaviors during adolescence.[15] Finally, growing up in poverty is associated with lower occupational status and lower wages,[16],[17] poorer health,[18] and deficits in working memory[19] in adulthood.

Reporting on child poverty rates at a single point in time gives an under-estimate of its deleterious effects, since research shows that persistent poverty, as well as poverty experienced in the childhood’s early years, is most detrimental to development.[20] Nearly four in ten children are poor for one or more years before they reach age 18—nearly double the point-in-time estimate. More than one in ten are poor for half or more of their childhood years.[21]

Source: Child Trends

Available at: http://www.childtrends.org/indicators/children-in-poverty/

Measuring Child Outcomes in the Early Years

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11/2015

By W. Steven Barnett, PhD, Shannon Riley-Ayers, PhD, & Jessica Francis, PhD

As our nation increases public and private investments to support the care and education of young children, there is increased concern about how specific public policies affect children before they enter primary school. This desire to establish cause and effect and to estimate the magnitude of benefits to children’s learning, development, and wellbeing (LDWB) puts increased technical demands on assessment (discussed below). In addition, causal attributions require more than simply describing children’s development over time, it requires rigorous research methodologies that warrant strong causal inferences.

The National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER), partner to CEELO, was commissioned by OECD to provide a scholarly discussion paper that presented the pros and cons of various methods of and instruments used for reporting on international data of children’s cognitive and social outcomes. This report draws from the work for that paper to provide information to inform decision-making regarding the assessment of young children’s LDWB for state and national assessments designed to inform early childhood education (ECE) policy and practice. We include “wellbeing” because ECE should not merely be a means to improve a young child’s future success in school, or even life, but should enhance the child’s current quality of life. The primary focus here is on the preschool years. As there are many, many assessments available, this report does not review all of the individual assessments. Several much broader reviews with exhaustive compendia are already available such a publication from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (Snow & Van Hemmel, 2008). Instead, we describe and illustrate each of the general approaches from which policy makers can choose.

Source: Center on Enhancing Early Learning Outcomes

Available at: http://ceelo.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/ceelo_policy_brief_assessment_final_web_2015_11_11.pdf

Responding to the Tennessee Pre-K Study

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9/29/2015

By Linda K. Smith, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Early Childhood Development

A new study of the Tennessee Pre-K program came out this week. Researchers at Vanderbilt University have been conducting an evaluation of the program for a number of years and the latest study reflects findings on children at the end of the third grade. Not surprising, the study shows that improved outcomes gained during the Pre-K year are not sustained by the end of the third grade. These results are similar to the Head Start Impact Study and are not particularly unique. They may be troubling, but not for the reasons one might think. Can – or should – we assume the cause of “fade out” is attributed to just the Pre-K program? What else should we consider?

First, fade out is not well understood. There are several things that should be considered. Do the gains fade out because of the quality of the Pre-K program or because of the quality of K thru Grade 3? Is the fade out the result of K-3 teachers focusing on those children who have had no formal early learning experiences – sometimes referred to as “catch-up?” – or is the dosage of the Pre-K experience (one year vs. two years or half-day vs. full-day) something that needs to be better understood?

Second, what do we really know about the quality of the Pre-K experiences overall? The quality of early learning programs has not been studied closely. In the years since the Head Start Impact Study was conducted in 2002, much has been done to improve the quality of Head Start. For example, significant improvements have been made in teacher qualifications, curriculum, classroom assessment and overall monitoring. The impact of these and other improvements have yet to be studied.

Third, how a child performs on certain scales such as literacy and mathematics are important, but alone are not the only measure of how a child is doing. It is well understood that the social-emotional development of children is at the core of their ability to learn academic skills and function in society. The Vanderbilt Study acknowledges that children arrive at Kindergarten socially and emotionally better equipped to learn, but what happens after that? As anyone who has ever taught kindergartners will attest, skills such as self-regulation may be the biggest indicators of how a child will perform later in life. What happens to this aspect of development during the K thru Grade 3 period deserves more study to not only better understand the Tennessee study but better approaches to the birth to five years as a whole.

Fourth, another question that is still largely unstudied is how the quality of the learning experiences in the schools the children attend impacts fade out and why. Do the gains fade out because there is alignment between the Pre-K and elementary school approaches to learning or curriculum? If so, how do we improve the alignment between two systems that are so different? According to the recent NAS Study on the Early Childhood Workforce “proficient learning in each domain of develop and early learning is facilitated when standards, curricula, assessment and teaching practices are aligned with each other and across ages and grade levels, based on rigorous research and evaluation and implemented with fidelity”. There is much we don’t know about alignment in each of these areas.

Fifth, are there more sustainable gains if children are provided rich early learning experiences earlier, beginning at birth, as the neuroscience suggests? If, as research demonstrates, by the age of three, poor children have heard 30 million words less than their economically advantaged peers, then the time to start is much earlier than Pre-K for four-year-olds.

One last thought – the Parents. Early childhood programs, especially those conducted in community-based programs, have much more engagement with parents. In part because of their children’s age, parents must deliver and pick them up directly, which provides for almost daily communication with teachers. The importance of this cannot be over-estimated but has not been studied extensively. Parent communication and involvement changes dramatically once a child enters school.

As my friend and colleague, Walter Gilliam PhD, Director of the Yale Child Study Center, once said, “if you eat a good dinner and go to bed full, it should still come as no surprise that you are hungry  the next day”. Maybe, just maybe, the fade out occurs because we are focusing too narrowly on just one “meal” or one year of a child’s life. What happens during the years before and the years after Pre-K are just as critical as the experiences during that single year of the child’s life.

World Family Map 2015: Mapping Family Change and Child Well-Being Outcomes

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9/2015

The World Family Map report monitors the global health of families by tracking 16 indicators in 49 countries, representing all regions of the world. This year’s report includes an essay examining how parents divide labor-force participation, housework, and child care.

Source: Child Trends

Available at: http://www.childtrends.org/?publications=world-family-map-2015-mapping-family-change-and-child-well-being-outcomes

Child Outcomes Summary (COS) Process Module: Collecting & Using Data to Improve Programs

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8/2015

This online learning module provides key information about the COS process, and the practices that contribute to consistent and meaningful COS decision-making. Over the course of multiple sessions, participants will learn about:

  • why child outcomes data are collected;
  • the key features of the COS process;
  • the essential knowledge needed to complete the COS process;
  • how the three child outcomes are measured through the process;
  • how to identify accurate COS ratings using a team-based process;
  • the importance of comparing children’s current functional performance to age-expected functioning;
  • when and how to measure progress in the three child outcome areas; and
  • how to document ratings and evidence to support those ratings in COS documentation.

Please use the link below to register for the module. You will be automatically redirected to the module after registering. The module is self-paced, so you may access it as often as desired.

Source: ECTA Center and DaSy Center

Available at: http://dasycenter.org/child-outcomes-summary-cos-process-module-collecting-using-data-to-improve-programs/

Early School Readiness: Indicators on Children and Youth

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7/2015

Compared with white or black children, Hispanic children are less likely to be able to recognize the letters of the alphabet, count to 20 or higher, or write their names before they start kindergarten. Black children are similar to white children on these measures, but are more likely than white children to be reading words in books.

Importance

School readiness, a multi-dimensional concept,1 conveys important advantages. Children who enter school with early skills, such as a basic knowledge of math and reading, are more likely than their peers to experience later academic success,2,3 attain higher levels of education, and secure employment.4 Absence of these and other skills may contribute to even greater disparities down the road. For example, one study found that gaps in math, reading, and vocabulary skills evident at elementary school entry explained at least half of the racial gap in high school achievement scores.5

As conceptualized by the National Education Goals Panel, school readiness encompasses five dimensions: (1) physical well-being and motor development; (2) social and emotional development; (3) approaches to learning; (4) language development (including early literacy); and (5) cognition and general knowledge.6 The school readiness indicator reported on here includes four skills related to early literacy and cognitive development: a child’s ability to recognize letters, count to 20 or higher, write his or her first name, and read words in a book. While cognitive development and early literacy are important for children’s school readiness and early success in school, other areas of development, like health, social development, and engagement, may be of equal or greater importance.7,8,9 However, although experts agree that social-emotional skills are critically important for school readiness, to date there are no nationally representative data in this area.

Source: Child Trends

Available at: http://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/07_School_Readiness.pdf

Head Start: What Works Clearinghouse

Posted on by

7/2015

Report Summary

Effectiveness
Head Start was found to have potentially positive effects on general reading achievement and no discernible effects on mathematics achievement and social-emotional development for 3- and 4-year-old children.

Program Description
Head Start is a national, federally funded program that provides services to promote school readiness for children from birth to age 5 from predominantly low-income families. These services are provided to both children and their families and include education, health and nutrition, family engagement, and other social services.

Head Start program administrators are given the flexibility to design service delivery to be responsive to cultural, linguistic, and other contextual needs of local communities, leading to considerable variability in the services offered. Head Start service models also vary according to family needs, such that children and families may be served through center-based or family child care, home visits, or a combination of programs that operate full or half days for 8–12 months per year. This review focuses on the effects of Head Start programs designed for children ages 3–5. The Head Start programs include a variety of Head Start service models.

Research
The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) identified one study of Head Start that both falls within the scope of the Early Childhood Education topic area and meets WWC group design standards. The study meets WWC group design standards without reservations, and no studies meet WWC group design standards with reservations. The study included 3,697 three- and four-year-old children in a nationally-representative sample.

The WWC considers the extent of evidence for Head Start on the school readiness outcomes of 3- and 4-year-old children to be small for three outcome domains—general reading achievement, mathematics achievement, and social-emotional development. There were no studies that meet standards in the five other domains, so this intervention report does not report on the effectiveness of Head Start for those domains.

This intervention report was prepared for the WWC by Mathematica Policy Research under contract ED-IES-13-C-0010.

Source: What Works Clearinghouse

Available at: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/interventionreport.aspx

The Condition of Education

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5/2015

This website has the key indicators of the condition of education in the United States. These indicators summarize important developments and trends using the latest statistics and are updated as data become available. A Congressionally mandated annual report on these indicators is provided to the White House and Congress each year.In addition, this website has Spotlights on issues of current policy interest. These Spotlights take a more in-depth look at the issues through text, graphics and short videos.

Source: The Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education

Available at: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/

Child Outcomes Summary (COS) Process Module: Collecting & Using Data to Improve Programs

Posted on by

5/2015

This online learning module from ECTA Center and DaSy provides key information about the COS process, and the practices that contribute to consistent and meaningful COS decision-making. Over the course of multiple sessions, participants will learn about:

  • why child outcomes data are collected;
  • the key features of the COS process;
  • the essential knowledge needed to complete the COS process;
  • how the three child outcomes are measured through the process;
  • how to identify accurate COS ratings using a team-based process;
  • the importance of comparing children’s current functional performance to age-expected functioning;
  • when and how to measure progress in the three child outcome areas; and
  • how to document ratings and evidence to support those ratings in COS documentation.

The following sessions are currently available:Session 1: So What’s This All About?

  • Session 2: Overview of the Child Outcomes Summary (COS) Process
  • Session 3: Essential Knowledge for Completing the Child Outcomes Summary (COS) Process
  • Session 4: The 7-Point Scale

Please use the link below to register for the module. You will be automatically redirected to the module after registering. The module is self-paced, so you may access it as often as desired.

Source: ECTACenter.org : The Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center

Available at: http://ectacenter.org/eco/pages/outcomes.asp#COSProcessModule