Lack of early child care effects on school‐age children's social competence and academic achievement

Abstract

Teacher ratings of social competence and academic achievement were obtained from a sample of 127 Bermudian children at ages 5, 6, 7 and 8 years. The children were studied first during their pre-school years, when they had been exposed to various amounts and qualities of day care. Quality of care was found to be important to the children's intellectual and social development while they were in the day care settings but not after 1-4 years of primary schooling.In hierarchical and simultaneous regressions, family background characteristics, not child care amounts or qualities, were found to be predictive of social competence and academic achievement in the primary grades. By school age, the effects of infant and preschool child care experiences were no longer influential in childmm's development, but family background continued to be important. These findings and their implications for child care are discussed.Keywords: Day care, social development, academic achievement, longitudinal study, follow-up study.research has generated a spirited debate, stimulated by the timeliness of the social issues surrounding child care. This phenomenon has been catapulted into prominence by the ever-growing number of mothers who choose to work or are obliged to do so. In this century, child care was sanctioned in the United States during periods of national emergency (World War II and the Great Depression), but in the absence of such circumstances, non-maternal care was provided only for "the poor, the immigrant, and the Scarr and Eisenberg, 1993;Scarr et al., 1989;Vandell and Powers, 1983). Studies that do not take the variable quality of care into account are unable to draw firm conclusions about the effects of home care or day care on children (Scarr and Eisenberg, 1993).Current research has gone beyond simple comparisons between home-reared and substitute care children to examine the effects of day care quality (Goossens et af., Howes, 1988;Vandell et al., 1988).Indeed, a number of studies have indicated that there are several indices of day care quality: staffchild ratios, group size, staff stability and caregiver training in early education or child development have repeatedly been found to describe quality (Phillips, 1989;Phillips and Howes, 1987; Ruopp et aZ., 1979). In addition, because most of these indicators tend to co-occur, a more global assessment of quality has generally been obtained via measures such as the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS) developed by Harms and Clifford (1980). Research programmes that employ both specific and global assessments provide more valid measures of quality (McCartney, 1984;Phillips et al., 1987a;Vandell and Powers, 1983).Studies guided by this focus on quality have reported positive effects of pre-school child care on a number of dimensions. For example, children in goodquality centres scored better on measures of language development (McCartney et al., 1985) than their peers in lower-quality centres. Caregivers at high-quality centres rated their children as more con...

Quality of Social and Physical Environments in Preschools and Children's Development of Academic, Language, and Literacy Skills

“…However, relations between preschool quality and development tend to be small (NICHD-ECCRN & Duncan, 2003), and significant associations are not evident across all studies (e.g., Chin-Quee & Scarr, 1994;Deater-Deckard, Pinkerton, & Scarr, 1996;Goelman & Pence, 1987;Kontos, 1991;Kontos & Feine, 1987). Studies of the association between quality and development have also examined differential effects of quality related to child characteristics, including: sex (Baydar & Brooks-Gunn, 1991;Bryant, Burchinal, Lau, & Sparling, 1994), race=ethnicity (Bryant, Peisner-Feinberg, & Clifford, 1993;Burchinal, Ramey, Reid, & Jaccard, 1995;Peisner-Feinberg & Burchinal, 1997) and home and family risk factors (Baydar & Brooks-Gunn, 1991;Bryant, Burchinal, Lau, & Sparling, 1994;Caughey, DiPietro, & Strobino, 1994;Hagekull & Bohlin, 1995;Peisner-Feinberg & Burchinal, 1997).…”

“…For example, two large-scale longitudinal studies of children from diverse regions of the country and economic and social backgrounds-the NICHD Study of Early Child Care (n ¼ 1,364) and the Cost, Quality, and Outcomes Study (n ¼ 733)-both found long-term effects on development related to the quality of care that children received (NICHD-ECCRN, 2002;Peisner-Feinberg et al, 2001). Two longitudinal studies that found no long-term effects of preschool quality on development (Chin-Quee & Scarr, 1994;DeaterDeckard, Pinkerton, & Scarr, 1996) had relatively small sample sizes (n ¼ 144, and n ¼ 127, respectively) of racially or economically homogenous samples of children.…”

“…Longitudinal studies are another way studies may be designed to detect effects of preschool quality, and in these studies, developmental outcomes are measured following preschool-and in many cases through third grade-to detect potential long-term effects of preschool quality. Many of these studies used a posttest only design in which preschool quality was associated with later school outcomes, without controlling for children's competencies prior to school entry (e.g., Chin-Quee & Scarr, 1994;114 MASHBURN Deater-Deckard, Pinkerton, & Scarr, 1996;PeisnerFeinberg et al, 2001). Without baseline controls, positive associations between quality and outcomes may not reflect development that occurred during preschool; rather, positive associations may again indicate that children who attend higher quality programs begin preschool with higher performance.…”

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) and reading acquisition in at-risk readers: Does quantity matter?

“…Previous failures to show persisting influences of ECEC experience (e.g., Chin-Quee et al, 1994;Hickman, 2006;Lamb & Ahnert, 2006) might not have used sensitive metrics of quantity, or the type of reading skill investigated might not have shown influences of ECEC quantity on initial status, but might have shown influences only on investigation of growth trajectories, timing of ECEC experience, and presence of reading and SES risk factors.…”

Early Child Care Effects on Later Behavioral Outcomes Using a Canadian Nation-Wide Sample

“…The findings from Vandell and colleagues (2010) are interesting because they counter arguments made that subsequent life experiences eventually override early child care experiences (Chin-Quee & Scarr, 1994;Colwell, Pettit, Meece, Bates, & Dodge, 2001). For example, Colwell and colleagues (2001) suggested that self-care (time child spent alone or with siblings) and unsupervised peer contact in the years following child care use are better indicators of children's externalizing problems in elementary school.…”