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Giving Compass' Take:
• MDRC breaks down what we know about preschool to third-grade alignment, efforts to ensure that students get and stay on a positive trajectory.
• How can funders support the development and implementation of preschool to third-grade alignment programs?
• Learn about strengthening children's math skills.
Over the past few years researchers, policymakers, and practitioners have become increasingly supportive of “preschool — third grade alignment.” The concept refers to the range of policies and practices designed to put children from birth to age eight on a positive developmental pathway that takes what they have learned in preschool and builds on it through the early elementary grades. This shift in the early childhood field reflects growing evidence that investments in preschool may be critical but insufficient to close persistent achievement gaps in the longer-term.
Achievement gaps in reading and mathematics are pronounced between children from divergent socioeconomic backgrounds They emerge before children even begin kindergarten. In response to evidence showing the substantial benefits of preschool on early learning and development, as well as longer-term gains in adulthood, public support for increasing the availability of high-quality public preschool in the United States is at an all-time high. A wave of cities and states — including Seattle, New York, Texas, Boston, and Georgia — have made major investments to dramatically expand and improve the quality of and access to publicly-funded preschool programming. Yet, a number of studies have found that the short-term impact of preschool on children’s cognitive outcomes fadeout as children progress through elementary school. This fadeout pattern has drawn greater attention to student experiences after preschool and helped increase support for policies and programs to improve “preschool — third grade alignment.”
As the early childhood field moves towards creating more integrated educational systems, MDRC is engaged in two large-scale multiyear projects to build rigorous evidence about the promise of alignment between preschool and elementary school for sustaining early gains in learning. In Expanding Children’s Early Learning from P-3 (ExCEL P3), MDRC is working with the Boston Public Schools (BPS) Department of Early Childhood, the University of Michigan, and the Harvard Graduate School of Education to describe and evaluate a district-wide curriculum and professional development model to align instruction from preschool to second grade. In Making Pre-K Count/High 5s (MPC/High 5s) MDRC (in partnership with Robin Hood) is working with the University of Michigan and the University of Denver to evaluate and inform work on a curriculum that aligns math instructional practices across preschool and kindergarten. Both projects will provide new information about whether and how aligned educational experiences improve children’s outcomes as they move through their early school years. In this brief, we review the state of knowledge that is informing this work and highlight how our current research will add new insight to this critical aspect of early education policy and programming.
There are continued pressures on districts to implement strong early childhood programs that can support students’ academic develop - ment across the transition from preschool to elementary school and prepare children to read at level by third grade. During this unprecedented period of growth in the availability of preschool, coupled with increased atten - tion to instructional alignment as a promising strategy to reduce the fadeout of preschool gains, districts that test their new instructional approaches with rigorous impact research will not only make progress towards their goals but will build knowledge that can inform the work of other districts. MDRC’s work in this area responds to this policy need and will continue to build experimental and descriptive evidence on alignment in the coming decade.