4 results
nine - Delivering high-quality early childhood education and care to low-income children: How well is the US doing?
- Edited by Ludovica Gambaro, University College London, Institute of Education, Kitty Stewart, The London School of Economics and Political Science, Jane Waldfogel, Columbia University, New York
-
- Book:
- An Equal Start?
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 03 February 2022
- Print publication:
- 29 January 2014, pp 193-218
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Introduction
Early childhood education and care (ECEC) researchers and policy makers have used the metaphor of the ‘childcare triangle’ – reflecting the connection, and tension, between the goals of advancing access, quality and affordability. The tension between these competing goals has never been so acute as it is today. The high share of children with working mothers makes increasing access an imperative for social policy (Fox et al, 2012). But at the same time, we know more than ever before about the crucial importance of the quality of care for child wellbeing (Shonkoff and Phillips, 2000), suggesting that simply expanding access without attention to quality may be inefficient or even counterproductive. Yet expanding access and improving quality are both costly at a time when budgets are exceptionally tight at both the state and federal level in the wake of the recent economic downturn.
It is within this context that this chapter asks how effectively, and through what mechanisms, the US attempts to ensure access to high-quality ECEC for children of all backgrounds. The chapter focuses on three types of policy – regulation, subsidy and direct public provision – and explores to what extent these mechanisms operate (and interact) to ensure that ECEC is both high quality and accessible to all, with particular attention to access, quality and cost of care for children from low-income families.
Terminology: in line with current US practice, we sometimes use the term ‘childcare’ as shorthand for the array of programmes and arrangements that make up the ECEC sector. We sometimes use the term ‘preschool’ to refer to school-or centre-based arrangements that serve three-and four-year-old children (in the year or two before school entry).
The challenge
In the US, most mothers are back at work before their child's first birthday (Han et al, 2008), and children do not start school until about age five. So that leaves a substantial amount of time that preschool age children need care if their parents are working, a situation that is made even more complicated given that many parents (and particularly those who are low-income) work non-standard or irregular hours.
8 - The Contribution of Middle Childhood Contexts to Adolescent Achievement and Behavior
-
- By Katherine Magnuson, Assistant Professor of Social Work, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Greg J. Duncan, Professor of Education and Social Policy, Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University, Ariel Kalil, Associate Professor, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago
- Edited by Aletha C. Huston, University of Texas, Austin, Marika N. Ripke, University of Hawaii, Manoa
-
- Book:
- Developmental Contexts in Middle Childhood
- Published online:
- 16 September 2009
- Print publication:
- 12 June 2006, pp 150-172
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
American children spend their elementary school years in diverse conditions. For some children, high family incomes provide large houses, safe neighborhoods, and enriching learning opportunities, while for others, middle childhood is a time of economic deprivation. Some children attend safe schools with highly qualified and caring teachers, while others do not. Some children live with both biological parents during middle childhood; others do not. For some children, relationships with their parents are warm and secure, while for others their relationships are distant and conflicted. For surprisingly many children, these conditions change over the course of middle childhood, and change itself influences children's academic and behavior trajectories.
In this chapter, we assess the extent to which the diverse contexts experienced during middle childhood matter for children's subsequent well-being. Given the established importance of early childhood development and preschool family background conditions, the extent to which contexts during the middle childhood years play a role in shaping the course of academic achievement and problem behavior trajectories is far from clear (Bradley & Corwyn, 2003).
Using data from a national sample of over 2,000 children followed from birth until early adolescence, we assess the extent to which middle childhood contexts add to the explanation of adolescents' academic achievement and problem behavior over and above early childhood environments. We address three specific questions. First, how much variation in adolescents' academic achievement and problem behavior is uniquely explained by the contexts they experience in middle childhood?
5 - Individual and Parent-Based Intervention Strategies for Promoting Human Capital and Positive Behavior
- from Part II - Human Capital
-
- By Greg J. Duncan, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, U.S.A., Katherine Magnuson, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, U.S.A.
- Edited by P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, Northwestern University, Illinois, Kathleen Kiernan, London School of Economics and Political Science, Ruth J. Friedman
-
- Book:
- Human Development across Lives and Generations
- Published online:
- 12 October 2018
- Print publication:
- 02 August 2004, pp 93-136
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
1. Introduction
The process of human development provides abundant avenues for interventions aimed at promoting healthy development. We focus our chapter on interventions designed to augment human capital and promote positive behavior, particularly for individuals raised in economically disadvantaged families. Human capital consists of skills acquired in both formal and informal ways that have value either in the labor market (Becker, 1975) or at home (Michael, 1972; 1982). Formal schooling is the most familiär and studied form of human capital. Since it produces both pecuniary rewards in the labor market as well as other important competencies, human capital is one of most important components of healthy development.
Completed schooling is a strong predictor of successful adult outcomes such as longevity, career attainments, and avoiding crime (Fuchs, 1983), as well as such two-generation outcomes as successful parenting (Hoff- Ginsberg &Tardiff, 1995). Nevertheless, researchers have long worried about the potentially spurious nature of these associations. Are they truly the result of the schooling, or do they instead reflect the greater ability or motivation that leads some to complete more schooling? The most sophisticated studies strongly suggest causal impacts of schooling on earnings as well as other positive outcomes, with the apparent social rate of return to investing in additional years of schooling averaging around 10% (Card, 1999). Roughly speaking, this means that investing $10 in interventions that successfully promote the attainment of an additional year of schooling (a difficult task - see below) produces a $ 1 annual increment to participants’ earnings. As we shall see in our review below, few alternative ways of spending $ 10 are likely to yield such a return.
The scope of human capital interventions we consider is quite broad, including those in early and middle childhood, adolescence, as well as early adulthood. We consider intervention programs that target individuals directly as well as programs targeting parents and family environments.
We begin in Section 2 with a review of the economic and developmental logic of interventions. Drawing from both developmental and economic theory, we develop expectations regardingthe “profitability” of intervention programs designed to promote human capital development at different points in life. Economic logic generally supports the view that interventions early in life are likely to be the most profitable, while developmental logic provides a similar set of predictions about the efficacy of interventions at different points in the life course.
5 - Cultural Differences as Sources of Developmental Vulnerabilities and Resources
-
- By Cynthia García Coll, Brown University, Katherine Magnuson, Northwestern University
- Edited by Jack P. Shonkoff, Brandeis University, Massachusetts, Samuel J. Meisels, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
- Foreword by Edward F. Zigler, Yale University, Connecticut
-
- Book:
- Handbook of Early Childhood Intervention
- Published online:
- 05 November 2011
- Print publication:
- 22 May 2000, pp 94-114
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Developmentalists have had an ongoing, albeit uneasy, relationship with the constructs of culture, ethnicity, “race,” and minority status (Cole, 1996; Duckitt, 1992). As their influence becomes recognized, these constructs have often proved difficult to conceptualize and even harder to incorporate as key sources of influence in all children's lives. This has led some academics and clinicians to ignore their role in human development, and others to inappropriately apply these constructs peripherally to their work; whereas a few academics and clinicians have placed these constructs at the core of their research questions and service delivery.
The push to understand the role of culture in children's development began in the middle of the twentieth century with the work of such anthropologists and cross-cultural psychologists as John and Beatrice Whiting (Whiting & Whiting, 1975), Robert Levine (Levine, 1977), and Michael Cole (Cole & Bruner, 1974; Cole, 1996), followed more recently by Sarah Harkness and Charles Super (Super & Harkness, 1980), as well as Barbara Rogoff (Mistry & Rogoff, 1994; Rogoff & Morelli, 1989), among others. Unfortunately, though well regarded in its own niche, this work has been relegated to the margins of mainstream developmental work (García Coll & Magnuson, 1999b; Slaughter-Defoe, Nakagawa, Takanishi & Johnson, 1990). Most developmentalists have continued to pursue implicit universal trends and truths; this detracts from our understanding of phenomena that are culturally bound and the influence of other sociocultural factors on development, thus affecting programming efforts on behalf of children and their families.
![](/core/cambridge-core/public/images/lazy-loader.gif)