The National Institutes of Health recently released a study that concludes a deceptively simple finding: the higher quality the day care center, the higher the academic scores – albeit, just slightly. This is a very impressive study which USA Today noted was the largest and longest-running study of its kind. The researchers studied 1,364 children, regularly evaluating them from pre-toddlers. USA Today said the study began in 1991 out of concern about the growing number of children in day care. (Note to the researchers: I hope you also consider why the number is growing. What is the income threshold requiring both parents to work? What do the parents spend the money on?).
The other reason I would like to know about why the number of day care children is growing lies in an interesting and potentially sinister dichotomy related to findings of the study. The study said the longer a child spends in day care, the more impetuous and impulsive they become causing them to take more risks than their peers. The study did not pursue whether these characteristics ultimately led to, or contributed to aggressiveness although they did conclude that these same teens were slightly less likely to act out as teens. Day care takes control of a child for almost 80% of the child’s waking hours. In other words, the center does more parenting than parents?
You can reference the study in the May/June issue of the journal of child development. “The fact that you have this persistent association is pretty remarkable,” James A. Griffin, a spokesman for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, tells MSNBC.
Griffin tells USA Today earlier that results from the study indicate that parents have “far more influence” on children’s development than day care. However, I strongly dispute this conclusion because the fact that there is not a wider gap in scores between higher and lower quality day care centers could be contain a mountain of undiscovered information when tracked year-by-year by neighborhood relevant to the economic differences between household incomes with regard to understanding the underlying psychology that occurs when children become more self-aware of where they live, how they live and their opportunities as they move from toddler to teen.
However, I am convinced that children, who attend day care and head start, are substantially ahead of their less fortunate counterparts because there is probably more self-esteem imparted to them by their providers compared to what they receive at school and at home. However, whether they are growing up with good values is directly related to the friends they make because they spend so little time with their parents.
The irony about the findings in their report is that there have been authorities saying that there is a need for oversight at every level of government of private and employer run programs to assure quality day-to-day care for our children. Sharon Landesman Ramey, director of the Georgetown University Center on Health and Education, told MSNBC; “I think it is shocking that we don’t have a much higher proportion of our children … in excellent, quality child care.” This is precisely why Obama and company should be measuring the basic care provided by every day care in the US.
There is one part of the study I have a problem with. It is the opinion that suggests day care “matters, but not hugely,” given by W. Steven Barnett, professor of education economics and public policy and director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, tells USA Today. Frankly, I think he is very wrong! Do you agree?
