Positive Long-Term Impacts of Early Childhood Education Programs

This research review, finds that children who participate in high-quality early childhood education programs, or ECE programs, before entering kindergarten later experience fewer special education placements, decreased grade retention, and improved high school graduation rates compared with peers who do not participate. These results support ECE’s utility for reducing education-related expenditures and promoting child well-being, as well as provide further evidence for the potential individual and societal benefits of expanding ECE programming in the United States.

McCoy, D. C., Yoshikawa, H., Ziol-Guest, K. M., Duncan, G. J., Schindler, H. S., Magnuson, K., Yang, R., Koepp, A., & Shonkoff, J. P. (2017). Impacts of early childhood education on medium- and long-term educational outcomes. Educational Researcher, 46(8), 474-487. https://dx.doi.org/10.3102/0013189X17737739