Children who are born in lower-income families can do as well as their peers from wealthier families if they attend preschool for five years. That’s according to a study that followed at-risk children for nearly five decades. But the study finds long-term impacts are different between girls and boys.
The study followed 100 lower-income children from the time they were born, until they turned 45 years old. All were given health care. But only the children in the control group were given high-quality, year round early education, beginning when they turned 6 weeks old.
“It is possible to have very strong positive impacts on vulnerable children,” said Craig Ramey, a professor at Virginia Tech who has been one of the researchers working on the study since it launched in 1971.
Kids in the control group who went to preschool did well academically and developmentally, compared with children who didn’t. They went on as adults to have better relationships with their family, were more likely to get a full time job, and vote. The majority of children in the study were Black.
During the first five years of life, there were no differences between the success rates for boys and girls. But as they entered public school, boys began to have lower performance in school. Ramey has a theory about why.
“Black boys are frequently discriminated against, in subtle and not so subtle ways that turn them off to the full development that they might have experienced, if the schools had treated them somewhat differently,” Ramey said.
He added further research could identify what types of interactions between children, teachers and administrators lead to differences in children’s development, and solutions that may help all kids equally.
