Talk to early education researchers for a few minutes and you’re likely to hear an acronym that sounds like “eckles”, rhyming with “freckles.” What they are referring to is one of the sets of data known as the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, that are gathered by the federal government’s Institute of Education Studies. The latest in the series was released this month and it’s a good statistical snapshot of U.S. 4- and 5-year-olds during 2005-2006.
Some interesting data:
* Only 20% of children are cared for only by their parents. (Therefore, the conservative cry that expanded public investment in preschool is equivalent to yanking kids out of their parents’ hands is silly. The vast majority of children already are cared for outside the home.)
*Preschools and pre-kindergartens, public and private, serve more than three times the number of children than does the Head Start program. (So this sector merits more attention.)
*About two-thirds of these children are know their shapes, numbers, and colors when they go to school. But math proficiency is more highly correlated with income than is language development. (Makes sense. Math is primarily developed in school and the more money a family has the more likely they are to be in preschool centers and less likely they are to be in Head Start programs.)
*Hispanic children are least likely to be served in centers and most likely to be cared for by relatives. The numbers for white children show the opposite.
Good descriptive data to feed into political and policy stories on pre-kindergarten. Also looking at the data may give rise to questions that may, with a little more work, lead to good solid stories in your community.
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