'What's behind being behind:' The birth-to-five gap

by Meghan McHugh

The racial and socioeconomic achievement gap often first surfaces as children begin to take standardized tests, usually around third grade.

But in reality the gap opens long before that – at or before birth, experts say, arguing that kindergarten is way too late to start.

President-elect Barack Obama agrees, promising to focus much of his education agenda on investing in the nation’s youngest children.

“Early disadvantage, if left untreated, leads to academic and social difficulties in later years,” wrote James Heckman, Nobel laureate in economics and Obama advisor, who has constructed a powerful productivity argument for investment in early childhood education. “Advantages accumulate; so do disadvantages.”

The ‘experience gap’

In 1995, one famous study showed that by age three, the children of professional parents have been exposed to 30 million more words than their peers born to parents on welfare. This striking difference is the powerful precursor to an achievement gap measured years later on tests like the PSSA.

“I guess in broadest terms you might call it an experience gap,” said William Teale, an expert in early literacy and professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “Vocabulary is like a proxy for experiences [and] opportunities that children have or don’t have. In that sense, it’s very much economically related.”

Linda Katz, executive director of Children’s Literacy Initiative (CLI), a Philadelphia-based nonprofit, founded her organization 20 years ago with the goal of enriching the vocabulary and improving early literacy instruction for young children at risk of being affected by the gap.

Lack of vocabulary is not innate, she noted. “When exposed, these kids jump right up to national averages.” At Philadelphia Head Start centers using CLI’s word-rich curriculum, low-income and minority children have made large gains, she said.

There are other examples of successful interventions. John Fantuzzo of the University of Pennsylvania, explaining his research on “what’s behind being behind,” concluded that poor children are more likely to be born with greater “risk factors” and fewer “ protective factors” affecting their educational success. Working with preschool teachers, Fantuzzo has developed a curriculum that integrates literacy skills with explicitly taught social and emotional learning behaviors. Results from a massive multi-year study of these classrooms have been encouraging, he said.

A comprehensive approach

But many of these successful interventions have not been replicated on a larger scale. Meanwhile, many children remain in “unregulated care,” either at home or with a relative untrained in best practices for promoting cognitive growth.