Strong First Steps THE IDB AGENDA ON EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT 2015-2018
For more than a decade, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has identified Early Childhood Development (ECD) as a priority, both operationally and in its knowledge-building activities. In October 2015, the IDB will launch its flagship publication entitled “The early years.� In the book, the IDB assembles its extensive work in Latin America and the Caribbean on ECD in three main sections: status of ECD in the region; status of parenting, daycare, and early schooling programs; and public policy aspects which influence ECD. The IDB research agenda hinges upon improving the design of ECD policies and programs by focusing on four areas: circumstances under which scaled-up programs are effective, dimensions of quality that have positive effects on child outcomes, appropriate services for children of different ages, and evaluations that measure medium- and long-term effects of interventions.
MOTIVATION ECD casts a long shadow. Long-term panels in the United States, New Zealand, Jamaica, and Guatemala all show that children with better nutritional status, and appropriate levels of vocabulary, cognitive development and socio-emotional development at young ages complete more years of schooling, have higher test scores in math and language, are less likely to be involved in criminal activity in adulthood, and earn higher wages. Rigorous impact evaluations have shown that a variety of interventions, including high-quality preschool in the US, parenting interventions in Jamaica, and cash transfers in Nicaragua, among others, can substantially improve child development outcomes which, in some cases, improvements have been sustained over time.
ECD lays the foundation for all learning. Deficits in early childhood are difficult and expensive to make up later on. For this reason, Nobel-prize winning economist James Heckman and others have argued that investments in early childhood have much higher rates of return than investments later on in life. Moreover, returns are higher when early investments are followed with highquality schooling.
CURRENT STATE OF THE EVIDENCE ON ECD FOR THE LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN REGION 1. Indicators of ECD outcomes: Only two countries in the region, Chile and Colombia, have collected data for nationally-representative samples of young children as part of a governmentled effort to measure development in early childhood. In addition, there have
been a number of ad hoc data collection efforts. These include: • Data collected by the IDB under the Regional Project on Child Development Indicators (PRIDI) initiative in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and Peru.
• Data collected in Peru under the auspice of Young Lives.
• Data collected in Bogota, Colombia to assess the concurrent validity of different ECD instruments.
• Data collected in Mexico, Ecuador
and Nicaragua in the context of the evaluation of cash transfer programs.
• Data collected in Antigua, Jamaica, and Saint Lucia in the context of evaluations of parenting programs.
• Data collected for very young children (ages 0-2) in Peru in the context of evaluations of a parenting program,
and a program to improve the quality of center-based care.
• Data collected by UNICEF in Multiple Indicators Cluster Surveys (MICS).
These data have been used to show that there are steep socioeconomic gradients in early development within countries— children in poorer households, and children of mothers with lower education levels, are much more likely to be delayed than other children. These data also suggest that there are large differences across countries. However, there is, as of yet, no widely-accepted measure of development in early childhood in the region. The absence of data on child outcomes at early ages is arguably part of the reason why governments and the public have not given as much attention to ECD as one might expect. The comparison with malnutrition and learning outcomes is instructive. Every country in the
region regularly collects nationally representative data on child height and weight. Also, many countries in the region participate in PISA, a measure of the knowledge and skills of 15-yearolds, and in SERCE, a regional test applied to children in 3rd grade. In both of these areas, nutrition and education, regular collection of data has focused the attention of policy-makers on the nature of the problem and in how to solve it. 2. Measurement of access and quality of ECD programs: ECD interventions generally fall into one of two delivery mechanisms: center-based care (including early schooling) and parenting programs. Access can be a challenge with parenting programs because parents may not see the value of these interventions, so take-up is often low. Access can also be a challenge with center-based care in populations that are disperse, for example in rural areas, where it may not be feasible to provide center-based care logistically or in a cost-effective fashion.
Where it has been measured, the use of center-based care increases substantially with child age. For example, in Colombia and Chile, use of center-based care is very low for children under the age of 2, increases by age 3, and is substantially higher for children ages 4-5. Similar patterns are found in Brazil, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Uruguay. The provider of center-based care (community nurseries, other publicly-provided care, or private preschool) varies considerably with family income. There are no widely-used, standardized measures of the quality of parenting programs. Quality depends on: the frequency of the visits, the skills of those who conduct the visits (they can be professionals, paraprofessionals, or community members who have received some training), the curriculum and the fidelity with which it is implemented, and the quality of the supervision and feedback.
Quality in center-based care depends on both infrastructure and processes. There are a number of tools that are widely used to measure quality in developed countries. Recently, the Infant and Toddlers Environment Rating Scale (ITERS) and Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS) have been applied in a number of countries in the region, including Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador, and the Classroom Observation Scoring System (CLASS) has been applied in Chile, Ecuador and Peru. While the results vary across countries, and across sites within countries, available evidence suggests two few key facts:
• Quality is often very low, especially the quality of care received by poor children.
• When there is any measurement of
quality by the programs themselves, it generally focuses on easily measurable inputs and infrastructure, while little attention is paid to processes,
in particular, the quality of the interactions between caregivers and children. 3. Impact of policies and programs: There are a number of credible, wellidentified evaluations of the impact of specific ECD interventions in the region:
• Cash transfers: Cash transfers to very poor households had positive, shortrun effects on child development in Ecuador (Paxson and Schady 2010) and Nicaragua (Macours et al. 2011; Barham et al. 2013). In Nicaragua, but not in Ecuador, the impacts were sustained over time. The evidence from Nicaragua suggests that behavioral changes, not just the cash, explain the observed improvements.
• Home visiting programs: Efficacy trials in Jamaica (Gertler et al. 2014; Walker et al. 2011) and pilots in Colombia (Attanasio et al. 2014) of home visiting programs that focus on working with
parents on simple routines to improve child cognitive development have had positive effects in the short run. In Jamaica, the intervention also led to more years of completed schooling, higher test scores, higher IQ, less involvement in criminal activity, and higher wages in early adulthood.
• Daycare: There are no randomized
evaluations of the impact of attending daycare. The results from nonexperimental evaluations in Chile (Noboa-Hidalgo and Urzua 2011), Colombia (Attanasio et al. 2013; Bernal and Fernandez 2013), and Ecuador (Rosero and Oosterbeek 2011) are mixed.
• Preschool (including kindergarten):
Access to preschool resulted in higher test scores and fewer behavioral problems in Argentina (Berlinski et al. 2009), and to more years of completed schooling in late adolescence in Uruguay (Berlinski et al. 2008).
SOME STUDIES CURRENTLY UNDERWAY • The Cerrando Brechas study in
Ecuador. This study is the most ambitious effort ever conducted in a developing country to measure the impact of kindergarden teachers, and to identify specific characteristics and behaviors of teachers that predict student learning. The results have critical implications for curricula at teacher colleges; for the selection of teachers; for how they are rewarded; and for how teachers already in the education system receive in-service training and mentoring.
• Two evaluations of the national Cuna
Más program in Peru. One evaluation focuses on an at-scale home-visiting intervention, the other on reforms to improve the quality of centerbased care by professionalizing some staff, reforming the curriculum, and improving the quality of infrastructure.
THE IDB KNOWLEDGE AGENDA The IDB is strategically focusing its evaluation efforts and resources on evaluating the impact of policies and programs that seek to improve ECD outcomes.
• Efficacy trials, pilots, and at-
scale programs: It is well-known that the effect sizes that are found in evaluations of very carefully designed, implemented, and supervised pilots are often hard to replicate in at-scale programs. On the other hand, it is difficult, and sometimes not advisable, for at-scale programs to deliver substantially different interventions
to observationally identical children. Careful consideration therefore needs to be given to the circumstances under which efficacy trials, pilots, or evaluations of atscale program make sense. • Quality: Quality is the greatest challenge in ECD interventions. But what is quality? The greatest effort should be given to credibly identifying specific dimensions of quality that have positive effects on child development. For example, under what circumstances are professionals more effective than paraprofessionals or community members? What are the differences in the costs? What are the costs and benefits of different child-teacher (or caregiver) ratios, and at what ages?
• Appropriate services for
children of different ages: It is likely that different kinds of services make sense for children of different ages, and that this has an effect on the costs of delivery. For example, center-based care of reasonable quality is substantially more expensive for very young children than for somewhat older children (because of the need for higher child-caregiver ratios for younger children). The evidence from the US and elsewhere also indicates that center-based care for younger children may also have a negative impact on their socioemotional development. These, and other findings from the literature, suggest that the modality of care that is most cost-effective will likely vary with the age of the child, and the environment (for example, for urban and rural settings).
High priority should be given to research that credibly informs this discussion. • Medium- and long-term effects of interventions: Research from the US suggests that the impact of interventions in ECD are often apparent in the short-run, fadeout thereafter (when children are in school), but are once again (strongly) apparent in adulthood, both with regard to labor market outcomes and with regard to the likelihood of being engaged in violence and other forms of deviant behavior. Most evaluations in LAC focus on the short-term, yet valuable information about the medium- and long-term returns of programs and policies would be important.
• The evaluation of daycare centers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. For numerous years, access to kindergardens in Rio was decided by a lottery. The evaluation is important because, like the evaluations in Peru, it measures the impact of an at-scale intervention.
• An evaluation of the impact of delivering parenting messages during health care visits in the Caribbean. This has been or is being tried in Chile, Mexico, and Paraguay, and is being evaluated in Antigua, Jamaica, and St. Lucia.
• An evaluation of the impact of
preschool teacher quality on child learning outcomes in Jamaica. Researchers at the University of West Indies, in collaboration with researchers from the IDB, have carried
out a cohort study which has collected detailed data on children since birth. These children, who are now on average 3 years of age, have been randomly assigned to different teachers within a school. This study will evaluate the impact of preschool teacher quality on child outcomes, and how it interacts with inputs provided at home.
• An evaluation of the impact of nutrition, water and sanitation in Bolivia. Poor health status in early childhood can have damaging effects on child development. A randomized evaluation that provides access to nutritional interventions, clean water, and sanitation—alone or in combination—is being carried out to evaluate the impact on child development.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES WILL ALSO BE DEVOTED TO THE FOLLOWING TOPICS: 1. Measurement. The IDB is carrying out analytical work to understand the concurrent and predictive validity of various instruments to measure ECD outcomes, while also analyzing the data on the Regional Project on Child Development Indicators (PRIDI) measure of child development collected for nationally-representative samples of children in four countries in the region. On the basis of this and other work, the IDB will also continue to engage in discussions with various stakeholders seeking to develop a common measure of childhood development. The IDB hopes to adopt this measure in the future when collecting large samples of data over time in developing countries.
2. Quality of services. Where possible, descriptive data on the quality of services will be collected, in particular in the context of IDB operations. We are currently working on a toolkit that discusses the relative merits of different measures of quality for center-based care. 3. Operational evaluations of programs and qualitative work. This will help understand what an effective institutional architecture for the delivery of ECD services would look like. This is an area of great importance but one which has been under invested in terms of research.
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