Effects of the Issue on Early Childhood Education
EFFECTS OF THE ISSUE ON EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
This study examines the effects of Tulsa, Oklahoma’s early childhood education programs on social-emotional outcomes at kindergarten entry. As such, it extends our prior work demonstrating substantial positive impacts of the Tulsa pre-K and Head Start programs on cognitive development, including pre-reading skills, pre-writing skills, and pre-math skills (Gormley, Phillips, & Gayer, 2008). We focus on children who were enrolled in either the Tulsa Public Schools (TPS) pre-K program or the Community
Action Project (CAP) of Tulsa County Head Start program during the year prior to kindergarten. Oklahoma’s pre-K program has received national attention because, as one of a handful of programs with universal eligibility, it reaches a higher percentage of fouryear-olds (68%) than any other program in the nation (Barnett al. al., 2007). It also offers atypically high quality preschool education (Phillips, Gormley, & Lowenstein, in press), perhaps in part because Oklahoma requires a lead teacher with a B.A. degree who is early-childhood-certified in every classroom and pays these teachers regular school system wages. In Tulsa, the CAP Head Start program follows the same guidelines. As a result, this investigation may be seen as offering a “best case scenario” look at the potential contribution of high-quality school-based pre-K and Head Start programs to children’s social-emotional development.
Social-emotional Development
Young children’s social-emotional development captures a broad swath of specific outcomes, ranging from the ability to identify and understand one’s own and others’ feelings, establish and sustain relationships with both peers and adults, and regulate one’s behavior, emotions, and thoughts (National Scientific Council on the
Developing Child, 2005). The importance of these foundational capacities has been welldocumented. Having behavior problems in early childhood, for
This study examines the effects of Tulsa, Oklahoma’s early childhood education programs on social-emotional outcomes at kindergarten entry. As such, it extends our prior work demonstrating substantial positive impacts of the Tulsa pre-K and Head Start programs on cognitive development, including pre-reading skills, pre-writing skills, and pre-math skills (Gormley, Phillips, & Gayer, 2008). We focus on children who were enrolled in either the Tulsa Public Schools (TPS) pre-K program or the Community
Action Project (CAP) of Tulsa County Head Start program during the year prior to kindergarten. Oklahoma’s pre-K program has received national attention because, as one of a handful of programs with universal eligibility, it reaches a higher percentage of fouryear-olds (68%) than any other program in the nation (Barnett al. al., 2007). It also offers atypically high quality preschool education (Phillips, Gormley, & Lowenstein, in press), perhaps in part because Oklahoma requires a lead teacher with a B.A. degree who is early-childhood-certified in every classroom and pays these teachers regular school system wages. In Tulsa, the CAP Head Start program follows the same guidelines. As a result, this investigation may be seen as offering a “best case scenario” look at the potential contribution of high-quality school-based pre-K and Head Start programs to children’s social-emotional development.
Social-emotional Development
Young children’s social-emotional development captures a broad swath of specific outcomes, ranging from the ability to identify and understand one’s own and others’ feelings, establish and sustain relationships with both peers and adults, and regulate one’s behavior, emotions, and thoughts (National Scientific Council on the
Developing Child, 2005). The importance of these foundational capacities has been welldocumented. Having behavior problems in early childhood, for