The importance of poverty early in childhood

Introduction: Using a poverty line set at 60% of New Zealand’s median national income, nearly one in five New Zealand children (19%) was poor in 2011. This poverty rate is considerably less than that of the United States and Canada, similar to that of Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany and France, and much greater that in Scandinavian countries. These rates are far from immutable; New Zealand’s child poverty rate was much higher in 2004 before social policies were enacted which focused, in part, on the country’s child poverty problem

Does Prekindergarten Improve School Preparation and Performance?

Prekindergarten programs are expanding rapidly, but to date, evidence on their effects is quite limited. Using rich data from Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, we estimate the effects of prekindergarten on children's school readiness. We find that prekindergarten increases reading and mathematics skills at school entry, but also increases behavioral problems and reduces self-control. Furthermore, the effects of prekindergarten on skills largely dissipate by the spring of first grade, although the behavioral effects do not. Finally, effects differ depending on children's family background and subsequent schooling, with the largest and most lasting academic gains for disadvantaged children and those attending schools with low levels of academic instruction.

Public Funding and Enrollment in Formal Child Care in the 1990s

Although the share of all 3‐ and 4‐year‐old children enrolled in center‐based care and early education has grown steadily in recent decades, rates of enrollment for children from low‐income families still lag behind those for children from families with high incomes. During the 1990s, growing public funding for compensatory preschool education and means‐tested child‐care assistance had the potential to increase the availability of free or low‐cost formal child‐care arrangements and thus the attendance of low‐income children. This article analyzes repeated cross‐sectional data on formal child‐care attendance from the October Current Population Survey as well as data on state‐level funding. The results indicate that increases in public funding are positively associated with the probability that low‐income young children attended formal care. These results also suggest that gaps in formal care between low‐ and high‐income families would have widened in the absence of public investments

Puzzling It Out: The Current State of Scientific Knowledge on Pre-Kindergarten Effects - A Consensus Statement

Scientific research has established that if all children are to achieve their developmental potential, it is important to lay the foundation during the earliest years for lifelong health, learning, and positive behavior. A central question is how well our public pre-kindergarten (pre-K) programs are doing to build this foundation.Forty-two states and the District of Columbia, through 57 pre-K programs, have introduced substantial innovations in their early education systems by developing the infrastructure, program sites, and workforce required to accommodate pre-K education. These programs now serve nearly 30 percent of the nation's 4-year-olds and 5 percent of 3-year-olds

What Works in Early Childhood Education Programs?: A Meta-Analysis of Preschool Enhancement Programs

Research Findings: This study uses data from a comprehensive meta-analytic database of early childhood education (ECE) program evaluations published between 1960 and 2007 in the United States to examine the incremental effects of adding enhancement program components to ECE programs on children’s cognitive abilities, pre-academic skills, behavioral, health, and socio-emotional outcomes. Preschool enhancement programs include parenting programs, skill-based curricula, and teacher professional development programming. Our findings suggest that the addition of parent programs and skill-based curricula to ECE programs can result in improvements to a range of children’s ECE outcomes leading to better school readiness. We found no differences in the impacts of ECE programs with or without additional professional development enhancements. Practice or Policy: Designing fully-developed parent programs by explicitly targeting parents, developing academically focused and skill-based curricula, and providing additional teacher professional development enhancements to existing ECE programs can have a substantial impact on a range of children’s ECE outcomes leading to better school readiness. Further research is needed in order to determine what conditions are essential to enhancement program success as well as what conditions have negligible effects on or inhibit children’s school readiness

mTOR Complex 2 Is Required for the Development of Prostate Cancer Induced by Pten Loss in Mice

mTOR complex 2 (mTORC2) contains the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) kinase and the Rictor regulatory protein and phosphorylates Akt. Whether this function of mTORC2 is critical for cancer progression is unknown. Here, we show that transformed human prostate epithelial cells lacking PTEN require mTORC2 to form tumors when injected into nude mice. Furthermore, we find that Rictor is a haploinsufficient gene and that deleting one copy protects Pten heterozygous mice from prostate cancer. Finally, we show that the development of prostate cancer caused by Pten deletion specifically in prostate epithelium requires mTORC2, but that for normal prostate epithelial cells, mTORC2 activity is nonessential. The selective requirement for mTORC2 in tumor development suggests that mTORC2 inhibitors may be of substantial clinical utility.W. M. Keck FoundationDamon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation (Research Fellowship)Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of America (Career Development Award)Howard Hughes Medical Institute (Investigator)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (K99 CA1296613-01A1)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (R01 CA107166)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (R01 AI04389)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (R01 CA103866

The Impact of a Poverty Reduction Intervention on Infant Brain Activity

Early childhood poverty is a risk factor for lower school achievement, reduced earnings, and poorer health, and has been associated with differences in brain structure and function. Whether poverty causes differences in neurodevelopment, or is merely associated with factors that cause such differences, remains unclear. Here, we report estimates of the causal impact of a poverty reduction intervention on brain activity in the first year of life. We draw data from a subsample of the Baby's First Years study, which recruited 1,000 diverse low-income mother–infant dyads. Shortly after giving birth, mothers were randomized to receive either a large or nominal monthly unconditional cash gift. Infant brain activity was assessed at approximately 1 y of age in the child's home, using resting electroencephalography (EEG; n = 435). We hypothesized that infants in the high-cash gift group would have greater EEG power in the mid- to high-frequency bands and reduced power in a low-frequency band compared with infants in the low-cash gift group. Indeed, infants in the high-cash gift group showed more power in high-frequency bands. Effect sizes were similar in magnitude to many scalable education interventions, although the significance of estimates varied with the analytic specification. In sum, using a rigorous randomized design, we provide evidence that giving monthly unconditional cash transfers to mothers experiencing poverty in the first year of their children's lives may change infant brain activity. Such changes reflect neuroplasticity and environmental adaptation and display a pattern that has been associated with the development of subsequent cognitive skills

Work-Based Antipoverty Programs for Parents Can Enhance the School Performance and Social Behavior of Children

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/65246/1/1467-8624.00281.pd

Do the effects of early childhood education programs differ by gender? A meta-analysis

A meta-analysis was conducted to examine gender differences in the effects of early childhood education programs on children's cognitive, academic, behavioral, and adult outcomes. Significant and roughly equal impacts for boys and girls on cognitive and achievement measures were found, although there were no significant effects for either gender on child behavior and adult outcomes such as employment and educational attainment. Boys benefited significantly more from these programs than girls on other school outcomes such as grade retention and special education classification. We also examined important indicators of program quality that could be associated with differential effects by gender