Studying Preschool Curricula

To help strengthen and improve the quality of the nation's preschool programs, the Preschool Curriculum Evaluation Research (PCER) program funds research to determine whether selected curricula can produce educationally meaningful improvements in children's school readiness. Each grantee implements its curriculum, and randomized field trials test the effectiveness of the interventions relative to prevailing curricula in the schools.

Mathematica is the national coordinator for the PCER 2003 group of grantees, overseeing all data collection and conducting cross-site analyses of projects implemented by Florida State University, the Success For All Foundation, the University of California-Berkeley, the University of Missouri, and the University of Virginia. Assessments and parent interviews took place in fall and spring of the children's preschool year (2003-2004) with approximately 1225 children and parents, and continue in spring of their kindergarten year (2005), and at the end of first grade (2006). In the fall and spring of the preschool year, staff conducted detailed observations of the classroom environment and literacy and numeracy activities. The study's main research questions, to guide impact analyses of curriculum intervention across the entire sample as well as within important subgroups, and trends over time, include:

• What are the impacts of each intervention on important dimensions of children's development, including cognitive and social-emotional domains?
• How do the curricula change the prevailing classroom environments?
• How do the impacts vary for subgroups of children, classrooms, teachers, or communities? What works for whom?
• What are the patterns of impacts over time, as children progress through preschool and kindergarten?

The four-year evaluation is funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES), which established PCER in 2002 to enhance the school success of children in low-income families.

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