Skill building in early care and education programs

Preschool policy is often motivated by the role of early childhood care and education in imparting valuable school-readiness skills to young children, which provide the foundation for lifelong skill advantages and greater success in adulthood. Our review raises questions about the degree to which a simple skill-building model-whereby preschool programs boost a set of domain-based competencies that fuel longer-run success-is a good framework for guiding preschool policy. Policy investments in preschool education boost school readiness in the short run, but in some recent studies these initial gains either quickly disappear to even turn negative. Considerable effort will be required to take advantage of these end-of-preschool gains by optimizing classroom learning experiences, integrating the learning goals of the preschool year and K-12 schooling, and continuing to push for new discoveries regarding truly fundamental early skills and capacities, such as child health, that preschools could target, that would not develop in counterfactual conditions. Supporting parental employment and access to affordable child care can boost family income and increase home investment in child enrichments, which can also benefit children's skill development. We argue that the preschool policy portfolio should include efforts to more broadly expand child care access to support family capacities.