#40. Long-Term Harm of Early Academic Training

Research reveals academic training in pre-K and K has long-term damaging effects on children's social, emotional, intellectual, and academic development.

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Dear friends,

In Letter #39 I presented quotations from kindergarten teachers about the harm to children caused by intensive academic training practices, forced by higher administrators, especially since the onset of Common Core. Tragically, such practices are now being implemented even in some pre-K programs, with four-year-olds. These programs are being implemented and expanded despite a long history of research showing that early academic training has long-term negative effects.

In this letter I will begin with what is the best-controlled, most scientifically valid study of such a program conducted to date: The Tennessee Preschool study. Then I will describe the results of several previous studies of long-term effects of early academic training, which, as far as I can tell, have been completely ignored by those developing education policy.

The Tennessee Pre-K Experiment

The first and , to date, only long-term truly experimental study of a state-wide publicly supported preschool program is the Tennessee Pre-K study. (See Durkin et al, 2022, for a full account of the study.)

Description of the Program

The purpose of the program was to provide free, “high quality” preschool for children whose family income was below the poverty level. Great effort went into designing the program and its curriculum. Unlike in many other pre-K programs, the teachers would all have at least a bachelor’s degree plus early childhood certification and would be paid on a par with elementary school teachers and have the same benefits. The National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) evaluated the curriculum early on and judged it to among the best; it met 9 of the 10 standards of an ideal preschool program by NIEER criteria.

Based on the belief that early academic training would give the children a boost for their subsequent schooling, the program was heavy on academics. The researchers describe it as follows: “The program provides a minimum of 5.5 hours of instructional time per day, five days per week. Classes have a maximum of 20 students and are taught by state-licensed teachers using one of 22 curricula approved by the Tennessee Department of Education.” (I can’t help but insert here that this may have looked good to the NIEER, but to me it looks like torture. Five and a half hours of instruction per day for 4-year-olds!)

How Researchers at Vanderbilt University Studied the Program

The long-term study was conducted by researchers at Vanderbilt University, including Kelley Durkin, Mark Lipsey, Dale Farran, and Sarah Wiesen, who were all authors of the recent report (Durkin et al.,2022). For purposes of the study, they focused only on those preschool centers where more families who met the poverty criterion wanted to enroll their child than could be accommodated. In those areas, a random procedure was used to determine which children could enroll and which could not. Those who, by what was essentially a flip of the coin, could not enroll constituted the control group. So, this was a randomized controlled experiment—the queen of methodologies.

All the children in the study had to be 4 years old by September 30 of the preschool year. In addition, to be part of the experimental group, those chosen to enroll had to continue their schooling in a public school in Tennessee. In all, nearly 3,000 children met these criteria and provided the samples used for data analysis. The procedure was a bit more complicated than I am describing here, but what I want to emphasize is that this is a very well controlled study of large samples of children.

The data for the study came from assessments made at various times in the children’s school career, from kindergarten through sixth grade.

What the Researchers Found

The results from following the children through third grade were reported in a previous article (Lipsey et al, 2018). In brief, the Pre-K group performed better than the control group on all academic measures at the beginning of kindergarten, but the control group soon caught up and, by third grade, the control group performed better on all academic measures than the pre-K group. Moreover, by third grade those in the pre-K group were significantly more likely to have been diagnosed with a learning disorder and had a higher rate of school rule violations than those in the control group.

The more recent report (Durkin et al., 2022) reveals that the advantages to the control group were even greater in sixth grade than in third grade. Here is a summary of the sixth-grade findings:

• On all the achievement tests—which were in reading, math, and science—the control group scored higher than the pre-K group. The differences in means were small to moderate in size, but in every case the advantage to the control group was highly significant statistically and the differences were all larger in sixth grade than they had been in third grade.

• By 6^th grade, 14.6% of the children in the pre-K group, compared to 8.4% in the control group, had been diagnosed as having a learning disorder sufficient to require an IEP (Individualized Education Program). Stated differently, those in the Pre-K group were 74% more likely to have been diagnosed with a learning disorder than the controls. (Parenthetically I note that the researchers also used a different way of analyzing the results, in which the observed percentages were weighted to account for differences in the demographic profiles of those in the experiment and those in the full statewide program. When this was done, the difference was even greater: The pre-K graduates were a bit more than twice as likely to have been diagnosed as learning disordered compared to the controls.)

• By 6^th grade, 27.3% of the Pre-K group, compared to 18.5% of the controls, had a record of at least one school rule violation. Moreover, 16.1% of the Pre-K group, compared to 10.9% of controls, had a record of at least one major offense (such as fighting or bringing a weapon to school) compared to controls. Stated differently, by either index, those in the pre-K group were 48% more likely to have committed a behavioral offense at school than those in the control group.

These are big effects! With findings like this, if the academic preschool were a drug or a food additive it would immediately be banned by the US FDA.

What Could Account for These Findings?

So, the major findings of the study are that this expensive, carefully planned pre-K program caused, by 6^th grade, reduced performance on all academic achievement tests, a huge increase in learning disorders, and much more rule violation and behavioral offenses than occurred in the control group.

It is worth noting that, according to the best estimates available to the researchers, 63% of those in the control group were cared for just at home prior to kindergarten, 13% attended Head Start, 16% enrolled in a private childcare center, 5% had a combination of Head Start and private childcare, and 3% were unaccounted for. It would be interesting to know how those cared for just at home compared to those in Head Start and private daycare in the outcome measures, but those data are not available. Remember, these were all families living below the poverty line, the very families that, according to common beliefs, are least equipped to provide a good learning environment for children.

The most striking finding in the study, to me, is the large increase in diagnosed learning disorders in the Pre-K group. It seems possible that this increase is the central finding, though the authors of the report don’t make that claim. Elsewhere I have discussed evidence that learning disorders can be produced by early academic pressure and evidence that being labeled with a learning disorder can, through various means, become a self-fulfilling prophesy and result in poorer academic performance than would have occurred without the diagnosis.

A related possibility is that the early academic training resulted in shallow learning of the skills, sufficient to pass the pre-K and kindergarten tests, but which interfered with subsequent deeper learning (an idea I discussed here). That could account for the finding that the deficit produced by pre-K grew over the years.  As years go on, success on tests may depend increasingly on real understanding, so anything that blocks such understanding might show up more in later grades than earlier ones.

Another possibility is that the pre-K academic grind and pressure caused children to develop a hatred and rebellious attitude toward school. This would be consistent with the reports of kindergarten teachers, reviewed in Letter #39, required to force academics on their students.  This might account for the increased rule breaking and offensive behavior of the pre-K group as they went through elementary school. The same rebelliousness might also have caused the children to take their lessons less seriously, which could, over the years, result in an ever-greater gap between them and the controls in test scores.

Still another possibility is that the deficit shown by the pre-K group was caused not so much by what was done in pre-K as by what did not happen there but might have happened at home. Four-year-olds need lots of time to play, create, socialize, take initiative, figure things out on their own, and learn to manage themselves. The time spent in academic training is time that they cannot spend on learning the much more important skills that come from self-directed activities. Perhaps the pre-K children were less prepared for school, especially the later grades of school, because they had not had the usual opportunities to learn how to manage themselves before starting school. This suggestion is consistent with previous research showing better long-term outcomes for play-based preschools and kindergartens than for those that have an academic component (discussed below).

Previous Studies Showing Long-Term Harm of Early Academic Training

The Tennessee results have been treated in the popular press and even by some education researchers as surprising, but they should not be surprising. A number of studies well prior to this one showed similar harmful effects of academic training in kindergarten and preschool. I’ll summarize some such studies here:

A study in Germany that Changed Educational Policy There

One of the most compelling studies showing the harm of early academic training was conducted in Germany about 50 years ago. In the 1970s the German government sponsored a large-scale comparison in which the graduates of 50 play-based kindergartens were compared, over time, with the graduates of 50 academic instruction-based kindergartens (see Darling-Hammond & Snyder, 1992). Despite initial increased test scores, by grade four the children from the academic kindergartens performed worse than those from the play-based kindergartens on every measure used. These included tests of reading and mathematics and assessments of social and emotional development.

At the time of the study, Germany was gradually making a switch from traditional play-based kindergartens to academic ones.  At least partly because of this study, Germany reversed that trend and returned to purely play-based kindergartens.  Apparently, German educational authorities, at least at that time, unlike American authorities today, actually paid some attention to research and used it to inform educational practice.

An Early Study of Preschool Methods for Children from Poverty in the United States 

An early study in the U.S. assessing effects of academic training in preschool produced results similar to those found in Germany.  This study, directed by Rebecca Marcon, focused on mostly African American children from high-poverty families (Marcon, 2002).  She found, as expected, that those who attended preschools focused on academic training showed initial academic advantages over those who attended child-initiated, play-based preschools; but, by the end of fourth grade these initial advantages were reversed:  The children from the play-based preschools were now performing better, getting significantly higher school grades, than were those from the academic preschools, This study included no assessment of social and emotional development.

An Experiment in which Children from Poverty were Followed up to

Age 23

Here is a very-long-term study begun even before the German study. In a well-controlled experiment, begun by David Weikart and his colleagues in 1967, 68 high-poverty children living in Ypsilanti, Michigan, were assigned to one of three types of nursery schools (this was before we started calling them preschools or pre-K):  Traditional (play-based), High/Scope (which was like the traditional but involved more adult guidance), and Direct Instructional (where the focus was on teaching reading, writing, and math, using worksheets and tests). The assignment was done in a semi-random way, designed to ensure that the three groups were initially matched on all available measures. 

In addition to the daily preschool experiences, the experiment also included a home visit every two weeks, aimed at instructing parents in how to help their children.  These home visits focused on the same sorts of methods as did the preschool classrooms.  Thus, home visits from the traditional classrooms focused on play and socialization while those from the direct-instruction classrooms focused on academic skills, worksheets, and the like.

The early results of this experiment were similar to other such studies.  Those in the direct-instruction group showed higher initial test scores, which faded out over time.  This study, however, also included follow-up research when the participants were 15 years old and again when they were 23 years old.  At these ages there were no significant differences among the groups in measured academic achievement, but there were large significant differences in social and emotional characteristics.

By age 15 those in the Direct Instruction group had committed, on average, more than twice as many “acts of misconduct” compared those in the other two groups.  At age 23, as young adults, the differences were even more dramatic.  Those in the Direct Instruction group had more instances of friction with other people, were more likely to have shown evidence of emotional impairment, were less likely to be married and living with their spouse, and were far more likely to have committed a crime than were those in the other two groups.  In fact, by age 23, 39% of those in the Direct Instruction group had felony arrest records compared to an average of 13.5% in the other two groups; and 19% of the Direct Instruction Group had been cited for assault with a dangerous weapon compared with 0% in the other two groups. (See Schweinhat & Weikart, 1997, for more on this study).

What might account for such dramatic long-term effects of type of preschool attended?  One possibility is that the initial school experience sets the stage for later behavior.  Those in classrooms where they learned to play with others, to plan their own time, and to negotiate differences may have developed life-long patterns of pro-social behavior and personal responsibility that served them well throughout their childhood and early adulthood.  Those in classrooms that emphasized academic performance may have developed lifelong patterns aimed at competition, achievement, and getting ahead, which—especially in the context of poverty—could lead to friction with others and even to crime (as a misguided means of getting ahead).

I suspect that the biweekly home visits also played a significant role.  In fact, that might have been the most crucial aspect of this study. The parents of those in the classrooms that focused on play, socialization, and student initiative may have developed a parenting style that continued to reinforce those values and skills as the children were growing up, and the parents of those in the academic training group may have developed a parenting style more focused on personal achievement and self-centered values—values that did not bode well for real-world success.

Further Thoughts

None of what I have written here should be read to mean that preschool is necessarily a bad thing. What is bad is academic drill in preschool. Academic drill is also bad in kindergarten. The studies comparing academic vs play-based preschools or kindergartens can be interpreted in two different ways. You can see them as showing the long-term harm of academic training or the long-term value of lots of playtime and fun for little kids. My reading of the research suggests that both interpretations are correct.

Perhaps you have noticed that the preschool studies described here all involved kids from impoverished families. There has long been a prejudice—and it really is prejudice, because there has never been evidence for it—that little kids from poor families need pre-K academic training, not play, to “catch up” to the kids from wealthier families. A big takeaway from the research, I think, is that little kids from poor families need play every bit as much as do those from wealthier families. Early play, early socializing, being read to, and all the other things that used to be the main activities in all kindergartens and preschool (or nursery schools) provide the foundation, for all kids, to subsequent success in social, emotional, intellectual, and even academic development.

I should note, before closing, that I have found a few reports of preschool programs having long-term positive effects, even into middle school (Preskitt et al, 2020; Mader, 2021; Gormley et al., 2018; and Indiana Office of Early Childhood; 2021). None of these studies, however, were true experiments. They were correlational studies comparing children from families who chose the program being evaluated with those whose families made some other choice. There could well have been preexisting differences between the groups that could not be accounted for statistically. Moreover, by my reading, none of these programs was intensely academic and some were clearly play-based. So, if you read about long-term positive effects of a preschool program, be sure to look at the details of the study.

I’m interested in your reactions to all this and in any experiences you have had with effects of ealy academic training. Your comments add to the value of this post for me and other readers.

With respect and best wishes,

Peter

References

Darling-Hammond, L., and Snyder, J. (1992). Curriculum studies and the traditions of inquiry: the scientific tradition. P..W Jackson (ed.). Handbook of research on curriculum. MacMillan. pp. 41-78.

Durkin, K., Lipsey, M. W., Farran, D. C., & Wiesen, S. E. (2022). Effects of a statewide pre-kindergarten program on children’s achievement and behavior through sixth grade. Developmental Psychology, 58, 470-484.

Gormley, W.T. Jr., Phillips, D. & Anderson, S. (2018). The Effects of Tulsa's Pre-K Program on Middle School Student Performance. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Vol. 37, No. 1 (WINTER 2018), pp. 63-87

Indiana Office of Early Childhood and Out-of School learning (2021). On My Way Pre-K: Indiana early learning pilot program final report evaluation from 2015-20121.

Lipsey, M. W., Farran, D. C. & Durkin, K. (2018).  Effects of the Tennessee prekindergarten program on children’s achievement and behavior through third grade.  Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 45, 155-176.

Marcon, R.A. (2002). Moving up the grades: Relationship between preschool model and later school success. Early Childhood Research & Practice 4(1).

Mader, J. (2021). Pre-K may boost math scores even eight years later. The Hechinger Report, April 1, 2021.

Preskitt, J., et al. (2020). The persistence of reading and math proficiency: the benefits of Alabama’s pre‐kindergarten program endure in elementary and middle school.  International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy, 14 (#8)

Schweinhart, L.J. &Weikart, D.P. (1997_. The High/Scope pre- school curriculum Comparison Study through age 23.” Early Childhood Research Quarterly 12, 117-143.

Note: Much of this letter repeats previous posts in my Psychology Today blog.