Preschool quality and cognitive development of preschoolers in Georgia

A growing trend in public education is the inclusion of four-year-olds, and volumes of research over the past four decades have documented the effects of preschool on children's development. Early studies of preschool programs for economically disadvantaged children compared children who attended with children who did not, and findings provide powerful evidence of short-term and long-term benefits of preschool. More recently, studies have examined the influence on development associated with a broad range of preschool characteristics including those regulated through polices (teachers' credentials, class size) and those that children directly experience (activities, materials, teacher interactions). Findings across these studies have been inconsistent, which may be attributed to the diverse study methods that have been used, or that preschool quality has differential effects for different groups of children. The purpose of this study was to examine the association between preschool quality and cognitive development among a statewide probability sample of four-year-olds in Georgia, using multiple measures of preschool quality and analytical techniques that attempted to account for selection effects (the tendency that higher performing children attend higher quality preschools) and negative correlations between children's performance when they begin preschool and the rate that they change over time. Children began preschool below national norms on three cognitive measures and developed at a faster rate than was expected by the end of kindergarten. Estimates of the variance in children's rates of development attributed to preschool settings were marginally different than zero, indicating that preschool settings had only a limited influence on the rates that children developed over time. Preschool quality was associated with children's performance at the beginning of preschool; however, only one aspect of quality---the location of the preschool---was associated with rates that children developed during preschool and kindergarten. Three aspects of preschool quality---overall quality, quality of the interactions, and location of the preschool within a school---had a stronger influence on rates of development among children who experienced certain social or economic risks. There was also evidence that rates of development of applied problem-solving skills were related to the degree of congruence between care-giving styles that children experience at home and preschool.