The Importance Of Quality And Development Of Children s...

Everything a child does or experiences during his/her earliest years is educational (â€Å"Quality Early Education†, 2005). Unfortunately, children’s experiences at this young age vary drastically, based on many factors, but especially socioeconomic status. So how do we even the playing field for our children as they grow beyond these earliest years and enter school? Although there is no magic answer to equally prepare all children for school, high-quality preschool programs have been proven to have an incredible impact on working towards this goal (Doggett Wat, 2010). The Importance of Quality ECE Programs Research on the early development of children’s brains, as well as their overall development, provides evidence that children are†¦show more content†¦David Kirp noted similar findings in his article Before School. According to Kirp, quality programs decrease the school readiness gap and have caused increases in language and cognitive test scores (2005). Kirp also states that: During the past 15 years, neuroscientists have effectively settled the ancient ‘nature vs. nurture’ debate. The research shows that genetic potential isn’t fixed at birth but is shaped by the environment, especially during a child’s first years - that there were ‘sensitive periods’, windows of opportunity in early brain development (2005). As one can clearly see, high-quality preschool programs can have major positive impacts on the cognitive, academic aspects of children’s lives. But how do these progra ms affect other aspects of the whole child? There have been three highly publicized, long-term studies done that have proven that preschool impacts the whole child; these are the Perry Preschool, Abecedarian, and Chicago Child-Parent Centers studies (Kirp, 2005; Lamy, 2013). The Perry Preschool study and the Abecedarian study involved children who were randomly assigned into preschool experimental groups and non-preschool control groups; both of these programs were of very high-quality. The Chicago study was a quasi-experimental study and involved many more children, who attended more typical, public school preschools of relatively high-quality (Lamy, 2013). All three of these studies