Background: Observation Studies, Unmeasured Confounding, and Sensitivity Analysis: An important part of educational research is identifying important, potentially causal, factors that influence children's learning from observational studies. However, it is well-known that discovering such factors from observational studies can be biased due to…

Causal search algorithms have been effectively applied in different fields including biology, genetics, climate science, medicine, and neuroscience. However, there have been scant applications of these methods in social and behavioral sciences. This article provides an illustrative example of how causal search algorithms can shed light on…

In this article, I investigate preschool children's participation in organised activities. Current political and academic debates consider informal education as a prime vehicle for potentially diminishing social class inequalities in educational outcomes before school entry. However, studies point to unequal participation rates between social…

The majority of students in Maryland spent at least a portion of the last school year learning virtually, from public prekindergarten through college. Throughout the year, jurisdictions made individual decisions to allow for a gradual return to in-person school in a variety of ways. Lessons learned from the earliest stages of the pandemic made it…

COVID-19 has brought chaotic change to early education. Most of the nation's 5 million 3- to 5-year-olds attending preschool classrooms had their attendance cut short in March 2020. Preschool-age children in family day care or at home with parents and other family members had their daily routines disrupted. Parents now often work from home and…

In Maryland, one way children's wellbeing is measured is by looking at the data from the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (KRA). While the data can illustrate how children perform on various indicators across literacy, math, social-emotional development and physical well-being, it's really a reflection of the "readiness" of Maryland…

The 2020 Census risks undercounting thousands of young Colorado children, depriving communities of federal funding and political representation for the next decade. Children under age 5 are more likely to be missed by the census than any other age group, with children of color, non-English speakers, and kids living in high poverty communities at…

KIDS COUNT has used data to help call attention to emerging trends impacting kids in communities across the state. This year, the Colorado Children's Campaign marked the 25th birthday of KIDS COUNT in Colorado! by exploring this important question: What has changed for Colorado kids in the past 25 years? Long-term trends are not possible for every…

The purposes of this study were to investigate the following: (a) the impact of sex, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and family income on the likelihood of whole-grade skipping between kindergarten and Grade 7 and (b) the effects of grade skipping during elementary or middle school on students' academic achievement in high school. The authors…

Background: Increasing evidence suggests that childhood language problems persist into early adulthood. Nevertheless, little is known about how individual and environmental characteristics influence the language growth of individuals identified with speech/language problems. Method: Individual growth curve models were utilised to examine how…

Across the nation, policymakers are paying increasing attention to the latest research on early childhood development--from brain development to cost-benefit analyses to longitudinal studies--and they are coming away with one conclusion: high-quality pre-kindergarten programs make the most of young children's immense learning potential and give…

This report presents survey findings from two cycles of data collection in a 45-km area of Montreal located east of the city centre. The study was conducted by Statistics Canada as part of the second pilot phase of the Understanding the Early Years initiative (UEY-II), using the Communities Survey, a research tool adapted from the National…

This paper examines the effects of different child-care arrangements on children's cognitive and social proficiencies at the start of kindergarten. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, we identify effects using OLS, matching and instrumental variables estimates. Overall, center-based care raises reading and math scores, but has…

Although research has clearly established that low family income has negative impacts on children's cognitive skills and social-emotional competence, less often is a family's experience of material hardship considered. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 (N=21,255), this study examined dual components of…

The "Colorado Children's Budget" presents and analyzes investments and spending trends during the past five state fiscal years on services that benefit children. The "Children's Budget" focuses mainly on state investment and spending, with some analysis of federal investments and spending to provide broader context of state…