Smart kindergarten kids are more likely to be successful

Great kindergarten teachers and childhood programs have a short term effect on children.

It has been observed that by the time they reach junior high and high school children who proved to have excellent results during kindergarten or early school have just a little better results on similar tests than children who did not learn very well during the early years, so how much can schools and teachers influence a child after all? It has been studied with the research on the fade-out effect that is based only on test scores and no other set of measures. But Raj Chetty , a Harvard economist, says that the test is not complete and believes that the final outcome is the one that should be taken into consideration, not only numbers, so, together with five other researchers wants to develop a test that would fill this void. They started by studying a well-known education experiment in Tennessee back in the 1980s and observed the life path of some 12,000 adults, now aged 30, that were children at that time. The findings, presented at an academic conference in Cambridge are extremely puzzling. The Tennessee experiment revealed that there were teachers able to help students learn more than other teachers did. A further study based on test scores showed that the effect disappeared by junior high, but when looking at the students in their adult life Mr. Chetty and his colleagues found out that the effect of the kindergarten had came back.  A higher percentage of the students who had learned more in kindergarten went to college compared to the ones that were not so eminent during their kindergarten years and surprising as it may seem were also less likely to become single parents. They were earning more then the others and were also saving for their retirement years.

They were able to calculate the extra amount earned at about 100 dollars per year more at the age of 27 for every percentile high at the score test at the end of kindergarten. A student that outdid the average to the 60th percentile, which was a usual score for a 5 year kid that had a good teacher was likely to earn 1000 dollars more per year at the age of 27 than a student that was scored as average at the same age and over time the effect seems to grow. The economists do not know the exact causes, but it seems that early education encourage skills that will be there the whole life of the child and later adult: patience, discipline, manners and perseverance. These skills are better highlighted in the early tests and will probably fail to appear in the tests done later. The tests developed by Raj Chetty and his colleagues are done on the background of a weak economy, and at a time when many people lose their jobs and are starting to doubt the value of education. This fact is also emphasized by newspapers and television stations that have many articles and shows suggesting that education is overrated and that it can’t protect workers in today’s economic environment. The anti education current relies on a mix of anecdotes and random facts, but the truth is that the difference between a college graduate’s salary and the ones that did not graduate reached its highest level last years, and the unemployment rate is much higher among the less educated.