Sarah Scaffidi

Econ 234

Policy Brief on Early Intervention: Success by Ten in Chesterfield County

I. The Socioeconomic Achievement Gap

There is a significant disparity between the achievement of students from high

and low-income households, a phenomenon that will henceforth be referred to as the

socioeconomic achievement gap. This gap begins at conception, and by the ages of three

or four, children from lower socioeconomic groups already tend to have fewer skills than

their wealthier counterparts. In a study conducted by Dr. Anne Fernald that followed

English-learning infants longitudinally from 18 to 24 months, affluent children had

learned 30 percent more words by age two than their low-income counterparts. These

same children went on to hear approximately 30 million more words by age three than

the children from low-income houses did. The gap increases exponentially as these

children age, which is why it is essential to intervene as early as possible

According to a Brookings Institute brief on the Success by Ten programs, there is

already a marked difference in math and reading scores between the most and least

advantaged children before they begin kindergarten. Those who perform poorly at such a

young age are less likely to do well in school and are at higher risk for teen pregnancy

and drug experimentation. They are also more likely to become unemployed adults who

are unable to pay taxes and become productive members of society. As you can see, this

is a dangerous trajectory that these children are on, is it easiest to intervene when they are

young and the gap is relatively small. It is also far cheaper to set up an effective early

education program than it is to support them as adults with welfare programs .

The program that I am proposing will target Chesterfield County, a school district

just outside of Richmond. There are 38 public elementary schools within this district, and

they service a great deal of students who do not speak English before coming to school.

Falling Creek Elementary, a Title I school within the district, provides food to qualifying

families for the weekend because those families cannot afford to feed their children.

When parents experience the stressors brought on by poverty, their resources are strained

and this compromises parenting abilities. For this reason, among the others that I have

discussed, children from low-income households would benefit from an early education

program.

II. Success by Ten in Chesterfield County

Early intervention can have a huge impact on a child’s work ethic and esteem.

Early childhood years are critical for development, and they shape the child both

cognitively and socially. From birth to age two, infants experience transient exuberance.

This is the great but temporary increase in the number of dendrites in an infant’s brain.

Dendrites receive impulses for neighboring neurons, and they facilitate neural activity.

This period is followed closely by a phase of pruning, during which unused neurons and

misconnected dendrites die. At this same time, popular neural pathways are strengthened,

making reaction time quicker. Pruning is a response to the formation of habits, and if

toddlers have been exposed to rich environments and novel stimuli, more of their neural

networks will be strengthened, allowing them to learn more as they grow. Conversely, if

they are exposed to weaker environments, such as households with members that use

about 30 million fewer vocabulary words than their affluent counterparts, these networks

never form and the dendrites that could create them are pruned. Biologically speaking,

this is why early childhood is considered crucial for learning and early intervention.

I propose implementing Success by Ten in Chesterfield County. This policy is

modeled on the Abecedarian program in North Carolina, an early childhood education

program with year round day care and a low student-teacher ratio. The program’s

educational activities consisted of games incorporated into the child’s day, engaging the

students while teaching them. Activities focused on social, emotional, and cognitive areas

of development, and gave particular emphasis to language. The importance of language

would be stressed in this program, since so many of the students are not native English

speakers.

A peer review article that examined 63 studies found that early childhood

intervention could also lead to child mental health gains. One of three strategies that the

article proposes to achieve this is to implement activities to increase skills like cognition

and social-emotional competence. Many low-income parents are unable to motivate their

children, whether they are too busy working two jobs to make ends meet or their

psychological resources are taxed by the stress of poverty, and their children miss out as a

result. Success by Ten would attempt to fill this void by encouraging exploration. Young

children experience projective optimism, meaning that they think they are good at

everything. This makes them willing to try new things as they are learning

communication skills and self-control, and Success by Ten would enable children to

respond to direction and feel motivated to learn.

Learning a new language is an experience dependent aspect of development, and

the young brain is open to making meaning of the sounds around it in a way that the

teenage brain, and even the middle childhood brain, is not. This makes it much easier for

a child to learn while he or she is still young, but it becomes increasingly difficult after

age seven. There is no better time for immersion than early childhood. The students are

young and their brains are elastic, and there are no standardized tests to worry about. This

means that teachers and aides can focus solely on the language, rather than giving them

tips and strategies for an arbitrary multiple-choice exam in a language that they are not

fluent in. I propose that ESOL aides work with non-native speakers in the mornings, but

then allow the kids to be in the classroom with English speakers for the rest of the day so

that they pick up the language naturally and quickly. This would be the starting point, but

as the year progresses, each child’s individual progress would be monitored, and those

who needed extra help with the aide would get more one on one attention, while those

who were picking up the language could spend less time with the aide and more with

peers. Since this program would be implemented on a relatively small scale, it would be

possible to meet the needs of individual children in this way, with their teachers and

possibly parents determining how much extra help the children would need.

If you turn to figure 1 in the Appendix, you will see the production function for

the potential impact of this program, represented by the green line. As you can see, the

high-income children start off at a slight advantage at age zero. That is because these

children are less likely to be born prematurely, are more likely to have mothers who take

care of themselves during pregnancy, and parents who try to teach them before they are

born. Studies have shown that there is a correlation between listening to Mozart’s music

and improvement on certain kinds of mental tasks, and playing classical music for infants

in the womb has become a growing trend among higher-income mothers. Though it is

likely that this so-called Mozart effect has more to do with arousal than the actual music,

when combined with dozens of other pro-developmental behaviors that higher income

parents take up, it still puts these children at a slight advantage before they are born.

As age increases, so does the achievement gap between low and high-income

children. It is easier to close this gap while they are young and the disparities are still

relatively small. Fortunately, there is a phenomenon known as self-righting, which refers

to the inborn drive to fix any developmental deficits, including physical and emotional

imbalances. This phenomenon also helps children adapt to their environments – for

instance, an infant in a relatively barren environment may develop into a curious

preschooler who concocts toys out of whatever he or she can find. Young children want

to succeed, and this program would move their production function up, diminishing the

gap between low and high-income achievement. Starting early is essential, but so is

collaboration with local elementary schools to ensure that the child’s progress does not

level off once he or she leaves Success by Ten. This program would work with

Chesterfield County schools to ensure the continued progress of students that enter the

public school system.

Innovation is key to any policy, particularly one taking on public education, and

so Success by Ten in Chesterfield would be evaluated after five years. The evaluation

team would observe these children in the classroom for both input and output. They

would examine their test scores, but also their participation, homework, and level of

engagement in their activities. Even if they do not excel in standardized testing, it would

be rash to call the program a failure. So many of the low-income students in Chesterfield

County public schools are afflicted by a serious lack of motivation, and after observing

them in their classrooms it is clear that a significant portion of them do not put forth their

best effort. For some, this may be the result of their ESOL level, but others who can

understand the instructions perfectly choose to stare blankly at their pages for an hour

than to work on their assignments. If this program can change their motivation, then there

is hope for their future success. If they do their work and are actively engaged in lessons,

then it stands to reason that their test scores will eventually follow. Even if they do not,

the program is shaping future citizens, and we need more enthusiastic participants than

apathetic bystanders.

An added benefit of this program is its cost effectiveness. Though it involves an

increase in funding now, it should save money in the long run. Success by Ten in

Chesterfield is based on the Abecedarian model, for which the benefits exceeded the

costs by more than two times. Successful students become employed, tax-paying adults

whose behavior benefits society, while unemployed welfare recipients are costing the

citizens making up the tax base. Not only is it easiest to intervene while children are

young; it is also cheapest.

III. Conclusion

Success by Ten in Chesterfield County has great promise to reduce the

socioeconomic achievement gap. By targeting young children, we are intervening while

habits are being formed and learning is most natural. The program would work to meet

every child’s individual needs, including a focus on ESOL students without the added

pressure of standardized testing. After five years, it will be evaluated, and innovations

will be made where necessary. The flexibility of this program, combined with the

plasticity of young brains, makes this an excellent opportunity to help children from low

socioeconomic backgrounds to raise their achievement.

AppendixFigure 1: Production Function for Achievement and Age

References

Berger, K.S. (2011). The Developing Person Through the Life Span (8th edition). Worth Publishers.

Fernald, Anne, Virginia A. Marchman, and Adriana Weisleder. "SES Differences in Language Processing Skill and Vocabulary Are Evident at 18 months." Developmental Science 16.2 (2013): 234-48. Web.

Ludwig, Jens, and Isabel Sawhill. Sucess by Ten: Intervening Early, Often, and Effectively in the Education of Young Children. Rep. no. 2007-02. Brookings Institute, Feb. 2007. Web. May 20214. <http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2007/2/education%20ludwig/200702ludwig%20sawhill_pb>.

Mullainathan, Sendhil, and Saugato Datta. Stress Impacts Good Parenting: The Behavioral Economists Perspective. Publication. W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Print.

Early Learning, Later Success: The Abecedarian Study 1999Highlights of the Age 21 Follow-up Study.Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, FPG Child Development Center

The role of early childhood education programmes in the promotion of child and adolescent mental health in low- and middle-income countries. Int J Epidemiol 1 April 2014: 407-433.

The Foundations for School Readiness: Fostering Developmental Competence in the Earliest Years. Rep. Early Head Start National Resource Center. Web. 15 May 2014. <http://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc/hs/resources/eclkc_bookstore/pdfs/ta6%5B1%5D.pdf>.