About this srcd poster session

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Panel information
Panel 21. Social Policy

Abstract

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Head Start (HS) is the signature public Early Childhood Education (ECE) program serving low-income children. With more states offering universal pre-kindergarten and billions of dollars being invested in preschool development block grants, HS children have more opportunities to enroll in state pre-K and receive child care assistance (CCA). Research identifying whether HS families are enrolling in additional public services could provide important information about service utilization and the outcomes associated with it. This study aimed to identify 1) the patterns of concurrent and sequential ECE utilization among HS attendees during the two years before kindergarten, 2) the predictors of ECE utilization patterns, and 3) the school readiness outcomes associated with those patterns.

We used the Early Childhood Iowa Longitudinal Study, a dataset comprised of integrated administrative records from the Departments of Public Health, Education, Human Services, and HS enrollment records. These data provide a unique opportunity to reliably identify and track concurrent use of public ECE services. The sample includes 4,609 children who attended HS for one or two years before enrolling in kindergarten during 2016-2017 or 2017-2018.

First, to identify patterns of ECE participation, a latent profile analysis (LPA) was estimated. LPA was used to categorize children into subpopulations by considering differences related to the number of months of enrollment on each childcare type (HS, home CCA, center CCA, or pre-K) and whether it occurred one (1bK) or two (2bK) years before kindergarten. Results of LPA analyses indicated HS families utilize public ECE in various ways, as evidenced by the emergence of six profile groups (Figure 1). While class 4 (42%) was characterized by attendance into only HS, the majority of children used other public ECE arrangements. The most used program was state pre-K, with 52% of HS children also enrolled.

Second, a multinomial logistic regression was used to predict associations between child and family characteristics and patterns of child care utilization. Results will be presented in the final poster.

Third, multiple linear regressions were used to link patterns of ECE utilization to six school readiness skills, as measured at the end of pre-kindergarten by the teacher-rated Teaching Strategies GOLD (TS GOLD; Teaching Strategies, 2011). Child age at assessment and child and family characteristics were entered as controls. Results (Table 1) indicate that profiles that showed high attendance to pre-K had better school readiness skills (classes 2, 5, and 6) in comparison to the profile that that attended HS only. This result was particularly large for children who attended the three ECE services (classes 5 and 6).

Our findings showed that over half of HS families additionally used other ECE services, suggesting some families may need to use several types of care in order to meet their needs. Stronger partnerships among programs or programmatic changes may be necessary to accommodate families’ needs. Notably, the program most often used by HS children and the one that was related to higher child outcomes was pre-K, evidencing that collaboration of HS with pre-K could increase efficiency in access to services while improving school readiness.

Author information

Author	Role
Heather L. Rouse, Iowa State University	Presenting author
Laura Betancur, Iowa State University	Non-presenting author
Ji Young Choi, The Ohio State University	Non-presenting author
Hanna Kim, Iowa State University	Non-presenting author

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