Eric.ed.gov – Process Dimensions of Child Care Quality and Academic Achievement: An Instrumental Variables Analysis

Child care quality is usually measured along two dimensions–structural and process. In this paper the authors focus on process quality–the quality of child care center instructional practices and teacher interactions with students. They use an instrumental variables technique to estimate the effect of child care center process quality on academic achievement for children. They use a national data set, focusing on low-income children, to examine the effects of high process quality child care on math, reading and vocabulary outcomes for preschool children. The goal is to discover the causal effect of process quality on children’s academic outcomes in the preschool years. The present study is an analysis of secondary data collected at different sites around the country, which is described in detail here. Data from the Preschool Curriculum Evaluation Research Initiative Study are used in the study. (Contains 2 tables.)