How Choices and Constraints in Parents' Early Education Decisions Affect Children's School Readiness

Introduction

In the United States, young children’s transition to kindergarten–typically considered the first year of formal schooling–can be a fraught event. Parents, educators, and educational policymakers share the goal of ensuring that incoming kindergarteners reach adequate levels of school readiness, meaning that children are socially, emotionally, and behaviorally prepared to succeed in a structured learning setting. Unfortunately, between 35 and 45 percent of U.S. children are not considered school-ready upon kindergarten entry (Barnett, 2011). These differences in school readiness are even starker between socioeconomic statuses (SES), with fewer than 50 percent of children from low-SES families in the U.S. entering kindergarten with adequate readiness. In contrast, more than 75 percent of children from middle- and high-SES families meet the standards of school readiness (Bassok, Finch, Lee, Reardon, & Waldfogel, 2016; Isaacs, 2012). This transition between early childhood experiences and kindergarten is a pivotal period in children’s lives; children who begin school behind their academically ready peers are likely to never catch up, with this gap widening as they move through school (Burkam & Lee, 2002).

Much of this gap in school readiness is often attributed to the differences in early environmental experiences between the lowest and highest SES households; greater income enhances the material and social resources available to children. However, these resources (e.g., books, opportunities to travel) only explain one third of the SES achievement gap (Brooks-Gunn & Markman, 2005; McLoyd, 1990; Morrissey, Hutchinson, & Winsler, 2014). Among other potential factors that contribute to this gap is the disparity in the quality and quantity of early care and education (ECE) experiences between high- and low-SES families.

The broad-level efforts to improve children’s school readiness include the recent expansion of different types of ECE programs in the U.S., including greater availability of publicly-funded preschool programs for lower income families and universal preschool programs for all children (Yoshikawa et al., 2013). Despite the increase in formal ECE options (e.g., preschool centers, Head Start), low-SES families continue to use more parental and informal care options before kindergarten than middle- and high-SES families (Bassok et al., 2016). This presents a problem for promoting children’s school readiness because the quality of informal home-based care is more likely to be evaluated as minimally responsive to the developmental needs of children, resulting in low-SES children experiencing lower quality settings on average (Coley, Li-Grining, & Chase-Lansdale, 2006; Loeb et al., 2004).

Even the children from low-SES families who are enrolled in high-quality, center-based ECE programs may not be able to reap the fullest potential benefits, as students from low-SES families consistently have the highest rates of absenteeism from preschool (throughout this chapter all references to preschool, rather than the more general ECE, will be used when referring to evidence presented specifically from a sample of center-based preschool programs) (Ansari & Purtell, 2018; Chang & Romero, 2008). Higher rates of early school absences are associated with lower academic achievement, and these effects are magnified for students who may come from low-SES households that lack the resources to “make up” what was missed from school (Ansari & Purtell, 2018; Dougherty & Childs, 2019; Gershenson, Jacknowitz, & Brannegan, 2017). It is clear from these enrollment and engagement trends that children from low-SES families–the children who benefit the most from high-quality ECE programs–may not receive an adequate “dose” in terms of program quality, as well as with regard to their daily attendance (Ramey & Ramey, 1998; Ready, 2010).