| High Quality Child Care Improves Academic Results |
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News from the National Institutes of Health Publicly reported September 15, 2009 A new study of 1,300 middle school children reveals that providing a higher level of child care in the first 5 years of a child's life, bosts academic achievement and reduces the negative effects of poverty. This study was conducted by researchers from Boston College, Samford University, and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The research article was recently released in the journal Child Development. The disciplines measured in the study were reading and math scores. Researchers used information from the longitudinal Study of Early Child 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 real takeaway here is that even minimal exposure to higher quality child care protects children from the harm done by living in poverty," co-author Eric Dearing, an associate professor of applied developmental psychology in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College, said. "When it comes to early child care, quality matters more for children in poverty than for affluent children in promoting the long term academic achievement of the former up to similar levels as the latter." Contact: Ed Hayward |
