UW-Whitewater study shows correlation between early childhood programs and higher math scores
February 04, 2016
Professor David Welsch, author of a new study on early childhood education, teaches a class in Timothy J. Hyland Hall on October 25, 2012. Photo by Craig Schreiner
Wisconsin school districts that offer early childhood education programs are seeing higher math scores by the time their students get to 4th grade.
That's according to a new study by the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, which looked at 14 years' worth of data from nearly every school district in the state.
"Preschool and kindergarten students will likely arrive at elementary school more prepared and with better academic skills and more developed social skills than those that do not attend early childhood programs," said David Welsch, professor of economics and co-author of the study. "Learning skills earlier allows teachers to progress students on to learning more advanced skills at an earlier time."
Districts with 80 percent participation in early childhood programs showed a 1.5 percentage point increase in the number of students scoring proficient or advanced on the math portion of the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination.
"That may not seem like a huge increase, but it could mean the difference between whether or not a district meets adequate yearly progress benchmarks," Welsch said. "That can have implications on everything from educational policy to housing prices in a community."
The gain was especially pronounced in districts where the population has lower-than-average levels of education.
"Based on our estimates, school districts in particularly less-educated regions would likely enjoy the largest benefits from public pre-kindergarten and full-day kindergarten programs," Welsch said.
Additionally, there is no evidence that early childhood programs have an impact on future reading scores at the district level. That doesn't mean these programs are not adequately teaching reading comprehension, according to Welsch. The reason for the discrepancy may lie in what parents are teaching at home.
"Parents are much more likely to teach students reading and language skills at home - and less likely to teach math skills - meaning early childhood programs can have a greater impact on the latter when it comes to test scores later on," said Welsch.
Recent graduates Kyle Koller, Quinton Baker, and Thomas Haasl, who studied economics, mathematics and psychology, respectively, served as research assistants when they were students at UW-Whitewater.
The study, co-authored by Benjamin Artz, associate professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, is published in the January 2016 edition of Contemporary Economic Policy.