What Works in Pre-k Curriculum?

Last month the Institute of Education Sciences released a major new study that evaluates the impact of 14 common pre-kindergarten curricula on pre-k students’ learning and pre-k classroom quality. Results suggest that some pre-k curricula are more effective than others in improving children’s literacy and math skills.

Pre-kindergarten experts generally agree that high-quality pre-k programs must have a clearly articulated curriculum that guides instruction and spells out expectations for what children will learn over the course of the year. They also tend to agree that good pre-k curriculum should be comprehensive—developing children’s literacy, language, early math, and social and emotional skills. And, as we’ve previously argued, good pre-k curriculum should be aligned with the curriculum that will be used in kindergarten and early elementary grades.

But beyond that, there’s relatively little consensus on what a good pre-k curriculum should look like. In fact, pre-k curriculum is the subject of heated ideological debates between those who favor different pedagogical approaches. There’s also relatively little systematic research on the effectiveness of different types of curricula currently being implemented in pre-k classrooms around the country. And the evaluations that have been conducted are often not well-publicized or accessible for policymakers and the public. That’s left policymakers adrift: We know that quality pre-k programs should use quality curricula, but if we don’t have solid research on the effectiveness of different curricula, how can we ensure that the curricula publicly-funded pre-k programs implement are effective?

The federally-funded Preschool Curriculum Evaluation Research Initiative seeks to address that problem, by evaluating the effectiveness of 14 common pre-k curricula. The study focuses on three questions:

1. What is the impact of each of the 14 preschool curricula on preschool students’ early reading skills, phonological awareness, language development, early mathematical knowledge, and behavior?
2. What is the impact of each of the 14 preschool curricula on these outcomes for students at the end of kindergarten?
3. What is the impact of each of the 14 preschool curricula on preschool classroom quality, teachers-child interaction, and instructional practices?

Twelve research teams from universities across the country implemented the 14 curricula in randomly selected samples of local pre-k classrooms; measured child outcomes at the end of pre-k and the end of kindergarten, for both children in treatment classrooms and a control group; and observed the quality of classrooms in both treatment classrooms and the control group.

Researchers found evidence that four programs had positive impacts on child outcomes, compared to a control group, either at the end of preschool or at the end of kindergarten:

• DLM Early Childhood Express Supplemented with Open Court Reading Pre-K had positive effects on reading, phonological awareness, and language at both the end of pre-k and the end of kindergarten.
• Pre-K Mathematics supplemented with DLM Early Childhood Express Math software had positive effects on math at the end of pre-k.
• Curiosity Corner, developed by the Success for All Foundation, had positive effects on reading at the end of kindergarten (but not pre-k).
• Early Literacy Learning Model had positive effects on language at the end of kindergarten (but not pre-k).

Most curricula included in the study did not improve children’s outcomes relative those of control group children, however. More of the selected curricula had positive impacts on pre-k classroom quality and teachers’ interactions with children: eight of the 14 curricula studied had positive results, relative to a control group, on these indicators.

There are some clear limitations to these findings.

First, just because researchers found no positive impacts for most of the curricula studied, that doesn’t mean they are ineffective. Children in the control groups were enrolled in the same types of pre-k programs as those in the treatment groups, and the classrooms they attended used some type of curriculum, most often (though not always) one developed by their teachers. What we can conclude from this research is that most of the curricula studied were no more effective in improving pre-kindergarteners’ learning than the various curricula that the pre-k programs would otherwise have used.

Similarly, we cannot necessarily conclude, based on this data, that the few curricula that had significant student learning impacts, relative to controls, are more effective than other curricula in the study, which did not. That’s because the curricula used in control classrooms varied across the experiments, and some control classrooms had stronger curricula than others. Variation in control classrooms is one major challenge in implementing very large, multi-site studies like this one, and the study design in this instance contributed to this program.

Finally, this study does not look at the cost-effectiveness of different curriculum models. It tells us nothing about the cost to implement each curriculum, or how it compares to the costs of teacher- and school-designed curricula, or other popular curriculum models.

Then what does this study show? First, this study’s findings show that curriculum does matter, and that some curricula can produce better learning outcomes for children than others. Specifically, it suggests that four curricula that did have significant positive student learning impacts are more effective than the, typically teacher generated, curricula most pre-k programs were using. That may not sound like much, but it’s a pretty significant finding for studies of educational curriculum, which often find no benefits relative to what schools would be doing otherwise. Policymakers should take this into account when considering curriculum requirements for pre-k programs. We clearly need further research in this area to produce more useful guidance for policymakers and practitioners going forward, however.

The Department of Education must also do a better job communicating research findings about different pre-k curricula. This study has so far received very little public or press attention, despite its importance. The Department’s What Works Clearinghouse has also reviewed evaluations of almost 20 different early education interventions or curricula, but those evaluations are also not well-publicized among early educators. As research confirms the common sense finding that curriculum models in pre-k are important, the federal government must do a much better job of supporting quality research on the effectiveness of different models and making the results accessible to policymakers, practitioners, and parents.