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Early Childhood Education

Westat has extensive experience conducting longitudinal studies that examine children's early life and school experiences and their influence on early childhood development. Many of the early childhood studies that Westat conducts are complex involving multiple respondents and methods and one-on-one cognitive assessments of young children.

  • Westat is conducting the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-11 (ECLS-K:2011) for the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), U.S. Department of Education. The ECLS-K:2011 is the third in a series of multisource, multimethod, longitudinal studies funded by NCES.
  • During the 2010-11 school year, approximately 20,700 kindergartners in 900 public and private schools across the nation will be selected to participate in the ECLS-K:2011. These children will be followed each year from kindergarten through fifth grade. Information about the children, their parents, their teachers, and schools will be collected in the fall and spring of kindergarten and then in the spring of every year. During the kindergarten year, Westat will collect the following components:
  • Westat also conducted the ECLS-K:2011’s predecessor study, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K), which followed 21,260 children from kindergarten through eighth grade.

  • Westat also conducted the first two rounds of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), which was the first U.S. nationally representative study to gather information about children’s learning experiences from before age 1 year through kindergarten. For the ECLS-B, Westat developed the Bayley Short Form – Research Edition for 9-month olds and two-year olds. Westat also collected and coded over 20,000 videotapes of parent-child interactions.
  • Further information and links to reports:
    www.nces.ed.gov/ecls. [*]

  • Westat is completing the fifth round of the Fragile Families study for the Center for Research on Child Wellbeing, Princeton University. Fragile Families follows a cohort of nearly 5,000 children born in the United States between 1998 and 2000 and their parents. The sample includes children born in 20 major U.S. cities. Approximately three-fourths of the sampled children were born to unmarried parents.
  • For the fifth round, fielded when the children were 9 years old, Westat conducted hour-long computer-assisted interviews with the biological mothers, biological fathers, and primary caregivers (person who lives with the child and knows the most about the child) of the sample children. Westat also conducted in-home visits that lasted approximately 2 hours.

    During the home visits, trained Westat staff:

    In two of the cities, Westat staff used a hand-held spirometer to measure children’s lung function. Home office staff mailed self-administered questionnaires to the children’s teachers.

    Because as many as 4 years had passed since the participants had heard from the study, Westat conducted extensive tracing and locating activities:

    Further information and links to reports:
    http://www.fragilefamilies.princeton.edu/ [*]

    Westat also examines program performance, provides descriptive information about the children who attend these programs, and examines the long-term effect of these programs on children’s socio-emotional and cognitive development:

  • Westat is conducting the Third Grade Follow-up to the Head Start Impact Study (HSIS). HSIS was designed to determine whether Head Start has impacts on participating children and their parents and whether any impacts vary among different types of children, families, and communities.
  • The Third Grade Follow-up study builds upon the research design, sample, instruments, and data collection plan successfully implemented for HSIS, which followed children through first grade and also was conducted by Westat. The purpose of the Third Grade Follow-up study is to determine the longer term impact of the Head Start program on the well-being of children and families. It also was designed to examine the degree to which the impacts of Head Start on initial school readiness is changed by children’s school experiences and various school quality, family, and community factors experienced through third grade. The data collection, conducted in spring 2007 and 2008, included:

    Westat is currently working on the analysis and reporting for this study.

  • Westat is also tracking the former participants of HSIS for the possibility of future research. The tracking activities include:
  • Parents were contacted in spring 2009 and will be contacted again in spring 2010 and 2011.

  • Westat provides training and technical assistance to the Head Start program to ensure that independent early childhood researchers understand and can work with Head Start data sets. We are also providing continued analytic support to meet the Government’s future policy needs.
  • As noted above, Westat conducted HSIS. A nationally representative sample of 84 Head Start programs, 383 randomly selected Head Start centers, and approximately 5,000 newly entering 3- and 4-year old children were selected for the study. The children were randomly assigned to either a Head Start group that had access to Head Start or to a control group that could enroll in other early childhood programs or non-Head Start services selected by their parents. Data collection began in fall 2002 (baseline) and continued through 2006, following children from program application through the spring of their first grade year. Outcomes were measured in the cognitive, social-emotional, health, and parenting practices domains.
  • Further information and link to the final report:
    http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/hs/impact_study/reports/impact_study/hs_impact_study_final.pdf [*]

  • Westat designed and implemented three rounds of a nationwide longitudinal study of the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES). FACES was a system of program performance measures to assess the effectiveness of Head Start programs in increasing the school readiness and social competence of children from low-income families. FACES included in a stratified national probability sample of 40 to 63 Head Start programs. Data were collected by:
  • Further information and links to reports:
    http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/hs/faces/index.html [*]

  • For the Head Start National Reporting System (NRS) Training & Data Management project, Westat gathered direct child assessment and descriptive data for 436,000 4- and 5-year-old Head Start children at the beginning and end of program year. Westat also trained lead Head Start program staff, who then trained their local program staff to implement the NRS. Westat analyzed assessment data for technical assistance and program improvement. In fall 2006, Westat gathered data on social-emotional development of all NRS-eligible Head Start children.
  • Even Start Classroom Literacy Interventions and Outcomes Study (CLIO) tested the relative effectiveness of early childhood education and parenting education interventions with preschool children and their parents in a sample of Even Start projects. Westat randomly assigned 120 Even Start projects to one of four enhanced interventions or to an "as is" control group. Westat collected a year of baseline data on each project before the enhanced interventions were implemented and tested. For each project, two cohorts of preschoolers and their parents were followed. Measurement of impacts on Even Start children and their parents were performed at the end of the preschool year and at the end of kindergarten and first grade.