Dean Beck A. Taylor:Quality of Early Child Care Plays Role Later in Reading, Math Achievement
September 15, 2009
Brock School of Business Contact: Kara Kennedy, Director of External Affairs, 205-726-4070, kkennedy@samford.edu
Sarah Hutcheon
Society for Research in Child Development
Office for Policy and Communications
(202) 289-7905
As children head back to school and attention turns to strategies for boosting reading and math achievement for low-income youth, a new study says the quality of early child care may play a role.
Beck A. Taylor, dean of Samford University’s Brock School of Business, conducted research for the study along with colleagues from Boston College and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The findings from their study are published in the September/October 2009 issue of Child Development.
The researchers looked at reading and math achievement of more than 1,300 children in middle childhood from economic backgrounds ranging from poor to affluent. They used information from the longitudinal Study of Early Care and Youth Development, which was carried out under the auspices of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
The study concludes that children who spent more time in high-quality (that is, above-average) child care in the first five years of their lives had better reading and math scores. This was especially true for low-income children; in fact, their scores were similar to those of affluent children, even after taking into account a variety of family factors, including parents’ education and intelligence.
“Much insight can be gleaned by understanding various contexts of child development, including quality child care, and the potential moderating impact such settings may have for particularly disadvantaged children,” according to Taylor. “In large part, our results can be explained by the fact that low-income children who attended higher-quality child care developed reading and math skills in early childhood that likely prepared them for later achievement in middle childhood,” according to Eric Dearing, associate professor of applied developmental psychology at Boston College and co-author on the study. “These results give added credence to the central role that higher-quality child care should play in future discussions on anti-poverty policy,” Dearing added.
Samford’s Taylor has done extensive work in the area of early child development and the various effects poverty has on school readiness and subsequent opportunities for workforce development. Taylor’s research concludes that childhood poverty puts children at a disadvantage when it comes to developing the skills needed to lead productive lives.
“One thing this study does confirm is that socio-economic conditions do have an impact on whether or not school-aged children can learn the necessary skills to help them enter the workforce later in life, but we can make a difference and policy makers should take notice” Taylor said.
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Summarized from Child Development, Vol. 80, Issue 5, Does Higher-Quality Early Child Care Promote Low-Income Children’s Math and Reading Achievement in Middle Childhood? By Dearing, E (Boston College), McCartney, K (Harvard Graduate School of Education), and Taylor, BA (Samford University).
Copyright 2009 The Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. All rights reserved.
About the Brock School of Business at Samford University:
The renaming of the Samford School of Business to the Brock School of Business in December 2007 is the latest in a long history of achievements for business education at Samford, which has offered degrees in business and commerce since 1922. In 1965, the School of Business was established to offer both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business. Alabama’s first part-time master of business administration degree program was established at Samford, and the first MBA degrees were awarded in 1967. The master of accountancy degree was approved in 1995. The business school was fully accredited by AACSB International in 1999, a recognition earned by less than 10 percent of business schools worldwide.
