IES Blog

Institute of Education Sciences

Celebrating the ECLS-K:2024: Providing Key National Data on Our Country’s Youngest Learners

It’s time to celebrate!

This spring, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2023–24 (ECLS-K:2024) is wrapping up its first school year of data collection with tens of thousands of children in hundreds of schools across the nation. You may not know this, but NCES is congressionally mandated to collect data on early childhood. We meet that charge by conducting ECLS program studies like the ECLS-K:2024 that follow children through the early elementary grades. Earlier studies looked at children in the kindergarten classes of 1998–99 and 2010–11. We also conducted a study, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), that followed children from birth through kindergarten entry.

As the newest ECLS program study, the ECLS-K:2024 will collect data from both students and adults in these students’ lives (e.g., parents, teachers, school administrators) to help us better understand how different factors at home and at school relate to children’s development and learning. In fact, the ECLS-K:2024 allows us to provide data not only on the children in the cohort but also on kindergarten teachers and the schools that educate kindergartners.

What we at NCES think is worthy of celebrating is that the ECLS-K:2024—like other ECLS program studies,

  • provides the statistics policymakers need to make data-driven decisions to improve education for all;
  • contributes data that researchers need to answer today’s most pressing questions related to early childhood and early childhood education; and
  • allows us to produce resources for parents, families, teachers, and schools to better inform the public at large about children’s education and development.

Although smaller-scale studies can answer numerous questions about education and development, the ECLS-K:2024 allows us to provide answers at a national level. For example, you may know that children arrive to kindergarten with different skills and abilities, but have you ever wondered how those skills and abilities vary for children who come from different areas of the country? How they vary for children who attended prekindergarten programs versus those who did not? How they vary for children who come from families of different income levels? The national data from the ECLS-K:2024 allow us to dive into these—and other—issues.

The ECLS-K:2024 is unique in that it’s the first of our early childhood studies to provide data on a cohort of students who experienced the coronavirus pandemic. How did the pandemic affect these children’s early development and how did it change the schooling they receive? By comparing the experiences of the ECLS-K:2024 cohort to those of children who were in kindergarten nearly 15 and 25 years ago, we’ll be able to answer these questions.

What’s more, the ECLS-K:2024 will provide information on a variety of topics not fully examined in previous national early childhood studies. The study is including new items on families’ kindergarten selection and choice; availability and use of home computers and other digital devices; parent-teacher association/organization contributions to classrooms; equitable school practices; and a myriad of other constructs.

Earlier ECLS program studies have had a huge impact on our understanding of child development and early education, with hundreds of research publications produced using their data (on topics such as academic skills and school performance; family activities that promote learning; and children’s socioemotional development, physical health, and well-being). ECLS data have also been referenced in media outlets and in federal and state congressional reports. With the launch of the ECLS-K:2024, we cannot wait to see the impact of research using the new data.

Want to learn more? 

Plus, be on the lookout late this spring for the next ECLS blog post celebrating the ECLS-K:2024, which will highlight children in the study. Future blog posts will focus on parents and families and on teachers and schools. Stay tuned!

 

By Jill McCarroll and Korrie Johnson, NCES

The Impact of Parent-Mediated Early Intervention on Social Communication for Children with Autism

A key challenge for children with autism is the need to strengthen social communication, something that can be supported early in a child’s development. Dr. Hannah Schertz, professor at Indiana University Bloomington’s School of Education, has conducted a series of IES-funded projects to develop and evaluate the impact of early intervention, mediated through parents, for improving social communication in toddlers with or at risk for autism. We recently interviewed Dr. Schertz to learn more about the importance of guiding parents in the use of mediated learning practices to promote social communication, how her current research connects with her prior research, and what she hopes to accomplish.

Why is parental mediation in early intervention important for very young children with autism? How does it work and why do you focus this approach on improving children’s social communication development?

Headshot of Hannah Schertz

The intervention targets social communication because it is the core autism challenge and it’s important to address concerns early, as signs of autism emerge. Research has found that preverbal social communication is related to later language competency. Our premise is that this foundation will give toddlers a reason to communicate and set the stage for verbal communication. More specifically, joint attention—one preverbal form of social communication—is the key intervention target in our research. It is distinct from requesting/directing or following requests, which are instrumental communications used to accomplish one’s own ends. Joint attention, which takes the partner’s interests and perspectives into account, is an autism-specific challenge whereas more instrumental communication skills are not.

Our research team incorporates a mediated learning approach at two levels—early intervention providers supporting parents and then parents supporting their toddlers. The approach is designed to promote active engagement in the learning process and leverage the parent’s privileged relationship with the child as the venue for social learning. Early intervention providers help parents understand both the targeted social communication outcomes for their children (intervention content) and the mediated learning practices (intervention process) used to promote these child outcomes. As parents master these concepts, they can translate them flexibly into a variety of daily parent-child interactions. This understanding allows parents to naturally integrate learning opportunities with child interests and family cultural/language priorities and preferences. Over time, their accrued knowledge, experience, and increased self-efficacy should prepare them to continually support the child’s social learning even after their participation in the project ends.

How does your more recent work, developing and testing Building Interactive Social Communication (BISC), extend your prior research examining Joint Attention Mediated Learning (JAML)?

Both JAML and BISC address the same goal—supporting social communication as early signs of autism emerge. In JAML, researchers guided parent learning directly while parents incorporated social communication into interaction with their toddlers. BISC extends the intervention by supporting community-based practitioners in facilitating parent learning rather than parents learning directly from the research team. BISC also added a component to address cases in which parents identify child behaviors that substantially interfere with the child’s social engagement.

You recently completed a pilot study to test a new professional development framework for supporting early intervention providers in implementing BISC. Please tell us about the findings of this study. What were the impacts on the early intervention providers, parents, and toddlers?

We tested an early version of BISC to study its preliminary effects on early intervention provider, parent, and child outcomes for 12 provider/parent/child triads. In effect size estimates derived from single-case design data, we found large effects for early intervention provider fidelity (for example, mediating parent learning, guiding parents’ reflection on video-recorded interaction with their toddlers, and supporting active parent engagement) and parent application of mediated learning practices to promote toddler social communication. We also found large effects on child outcomes (social reciprocity, child behavior, and social play) and a small effect on joint attention.

As you begin your larger-scale trial to examine the efficacy of BISC on provider, parent, and child outcomes, what impact do you hope your work will have on the field of early intervention generally and the development of social communication in children with autism more specifically? 

Approximately 165 community-based early intervention practitioners will have learned to support parent learning through direct participation or as control group participants who receive self-study materials. These providers will be equipped to bring this knowledge to their future work. We anticipate that practitioners will experience their implementation role as feasible and effective. Ultimately, toddlers with early signs of autism will have greater access to early, developmentally appropriate, and family-empowering early intervention that directly addresses the core social difficulty of autism. Forthcoming published materials will extend access to other providers, offering an intervention that is more specifically tailored to the needs of very young children with social communication challenges than other approaches.

Is there anything else you would like to share/add regarding your projects? 

I would like to thank my colleagues and project co-principal investigators (Co-PIs) for their expertise and contributions to this work. For our current BISC efficacy project, Co-PI Dr. Patricia Muller (Director of the Center for Evaluation, Policy, and Research) is leading the randomized controlled trial and cost-effectiveness study, and Co-PI Dr. Jessica Lester (professor of Counseling and Educational Psychology) is overseeing the qualitative investigation of parent-child interactions using conversation analysis to explore potential influences on child outcomes. Kathryn Horn coordinates intervention activities, Lucia Zook oversees operational and assessment activities, and Addison McGeary supports recruitment and logistical activities.

This blog was authored by Skyler Fesagaiga, a Virtual Student Federal Service intern for NCSER and graduate student at the University of California, San Diego. The grants in this connected line of research have been managed by Amy Sussman (PO for NCSER’s early intervention portfolio) and Emily Weaver (PO for NCSER’s autism research portfolio).

Education at a Glance 2023: Putting U.S. Data in a Global Context

International comparisons provide reference points for researchers and policy analysts to understand trends and patterns in national education data and are very important as U.S. students compete in an increasingly global economy.

Education at a Glance (EAG), an annual publication produced by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), provides data on the structure, finances, and progress of education systems in 38 OECD countries—including the United States—as well as a number of OECD accession and partner countries. Data presented in EAG on topics of high policy interest in the United States are also featured in NCES reports, including the Condition of Education and Digest of Education Statistics.  

The recently released 2023 edition of EAG shows that the United States is above the international average on some measures, such as funding of postsecondary education, but lags behind in others, such as participation in early childhood education and care (ECEC). The 2023 report also features a Spotlight on Vocational Education and Training as well as interactive data dashboards on ECEC systems, upper secondary education systems, and educational support for Ukrainian refugees.


Spotlight on Vocational Education and Training (VET)

Each EAG edition centers on a particular theme of high policy relevance in OECD countries. The focus of this year’s report is VET programs, which look very different in the United States compared with many other OECD countries. Unlike in many OECD countries, most high schools in the United States do not offer a separate, distinct vocational track at the upper secondary (high school) level. Instead, vocational education is available as optional career and technical education (CTE) courses throughout high school. Regardless of whether they choose to take CTE courses, all U.S. students who complete high school have the same potential to access postsecondary programs. In other OECD countries, selecting a vocational track at this level may lead to different postsecondary opportunities. Check out the 2023 EAG Spotlight for an overview of VET programs across OECD countries.


Highlights From EAG 2023

Below is a selection of topics from the EAG report highlighting how key education benchmarks in the United States compare with other OECD countries.


Postsecondary Educational Attainment

The percentage of U.S. 25- to 34-year-olds with a postsecondary degree increased by 13 percentage points between 2000 and 2022, reaching 51 percent (the OECD average in 2022 was 47 percent) (Table A1.3).1 In this age group in the United States, higher percentages of women than men attained a postsecondary degree (56 vs. 46 percent) (Table A1.2). Across OECD countries, the average postsecondary educational attainment gap between 25- to 34-year-old men and women in 2022 (13 percentage points) was wider than the gap in the United States (10 percentage points). In the United States, the postsecondary attainment rate for 25- to 34-year-old men was 5 percentage points higher than the OECD average, and the attainment rate for women was 3 percentage points higher than the OECD average.


Figure 1. Percentage of 25- to 34-year-olds with a postsecondary degree, by OECD country: 2022

[click to enlarge image]

Data include a small percentage of adults with lower levels of attainment.
Year of reference differs from 2022. Refer to the source table for more details.
SOURCE: OECD (2023), Table A1.3. See Source section for more information and Annex 3 for notes.


International Student Enrollment

The United States is the top OECD destination country for international students enrolling in postsecondary education. In 2021, some 833,204 foreign students were enrolled in postsecondary programs in the United States, representing 13 percent of the international education market share (Table B6.1).2 In comparison, the United Kingdom had the second highest number of international students enrolled in postsecondary education in 2021, representing 9 percent of the international education market share. Interestingly, when examining enrollment trends over the past 3 years (2019 to 2021), foreign student enrollment decreased by 143,649 students (15 percent) in the United States but increased by 111,570 students (23 percent) in the United Kingdom. International student enrollment during these years was likely affected by the coronavirus pandemic, which had large impacts on global travel in 2020 and 2021.


Education Spending

U.S. spending on education is relatively high across all levels of education compared with the OECD average. The largest difference is in postsecondary spending, where the United States spent $36,172 per full-time postsecondary student in 2020, the second highest amount after Luxembourg ($53,421) and nearly double the OECD average ($18,105) (Table C1.1).3 This spending on postsecondary education amounts to 2.5 percent of the U.S. GDP, higher than the OECD average (1.5 percent) (Table C2.1). These total expenditures include amounts received from governments, students, and all other sources.


Figure 2. Expenditures per full-time equivalent student, by education level and OECD country: 2020

[click to enlarge image]

1 Year of reference differs from 2020. Refer to the source table for more details.
SOURCE: OECD (2023), Table C1.1. See Source section for more information and Annex 3 for notes.


High School Completion Rate

The United States has a higher upper secondary (high school) completion rate than most other OECD countries. In 2021, some 87 percent of U.S. students completed their high school program in the expected timeframe, compared with the OECD average of 72 percent (Table B3.1).


Early Childhood Education

The level of participation in early childhood education programs in the United States is below the OECD average. In 2021, average enrollment rates across OECD countries were 72 percent for 3-year-olds, 87 percent for 4-year-olds, and 84 percent for 5-year-olds (Table B2.1). In contrast, enrollment rates for students of these ages in the United States were 30 percent for 3-year-olds, 50 percent for 4-years-olds, and 81 percent for 5-year-olds.  

 

Browse the full EAG 2023 report to see how the United States compares with other countries on these and other important education-related topics.

 

By RaeAnne Friesenhahn, AIR, and Cris De Brey, NCES


[1] EAG data for the year 2000 can be accessed via the online OECD Stat database.

[2] Unrounded data in Excel format can be accessed via the StatLink located below each table.

[3] Expenditure in national currencies was converted into equivalent USD by dividing the national currency figure by the purchasing power parity (PPP) index for GDP. For more details on methodology see Annex 2 and Annex 3.

Award-Winning Efficacy Research on Improving Cognitive and Motor Skills in Infants with Neuromotor Disabilities

Headshot of Regina (Reggie) Harbourne

Congratulations to Regina (Reggie) Harbourne and her colleagues for receiving the most prestigious award of the American Academy for Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine (AACPDM)—for the second time!—for their NCSER-funded research on the efficacy of the START-Play intervention. The Gayle G. Arnold Award is presented annually to the authors of the best scientific manuscript in the field. Dr. Harbourne and her colleagues received the award in 2019 for their first publication on the initial motor and cognitive outcomes of this study. They recently accepted this award again at the 2022 annual meeting for a follow-up publication on the impacts of the intervention on the important cognitive construct of object permanence.

Sitting Together and Reaching to Play (START-Play) is an intervention designed to target sitting, reaching, and motor-based problem solving in infants with motor delays or disabilities. Physical therapists work in the child’s home with the family on providing intensive, individualized activities to promote these motor skills, building toward goal-directed movements, problem-solving, and learning basic cause-effect relationships based in early motor skills. In this study, the research team conducted a randomized controlled trial with 112 infants aged 7 to 16 months. Those receiving START-Play and those in the control group all continued to receive their usual early intervention services. Children were assessed at various timepoints during the 12-week intervention as well as follow-up visits up to examine maintenance of outcomes.

In their first award-winning manuscript, START-Play Physical Therapy Intervention Impacts Motor and Cognitive Outcomes in Infants With Neuromotor Disorders: A Multisite Randomized Clinical Trial, the authors report on the primary impacts of the intervention. They found that for those infants with more significant motor delay, those who received START-Play had greater improvements in cognition, fine motor skills, and problem-solving (at the 3-month follow up), and greater improvements were maintained for fine motor skills and for reaching at the 12-month follow up when compared to the infants receiving usual care. In addition to the Arnold Award, this manuscript won another prestigious research award from the American Physical Therapy Association, the Chattanooga Award, which recognizes authors who publish work in the association’s journal, Physical Therapy Journal.

The most recent Arnold award was for the research team’s new secondary outcomes manuscript, Early vs. Late Reaching Mastery’s Effect on Object Permanence in Infants with Motor Delays Receiving START-Play and Usual Care Early Intervention.[1] Object permanence is the cognitive construct that allows us to maintain a continual mental representation of an object, an important working memory skill for infants to develop. This manuscript reports that, overall, infants who mastered the motor skill of reaching early showed greater development of object permanence understanding than infants who mastered reaching later. Children who reached early and also received the START-Play intervention continued to improve their object permanence understanding to a greater degree than children receiving usual care. This study extended our understanding of how object permanence relates to developing motor skills, described in the authors’ previous publication, which revealed that object permanence skills improved as sitting skills improved. Together, these two papers show how developing the motor skills of sitting and reaching are important to building cognitive skills and understanding objects in the world.

After accepting the award, Dr. Harbourne answered some questions from NCSER about her team’s research on START-Play.

What was the motivation behind your work on developing and testing the efficacy of START-Play? 

Early intervention services for children with motor delays or dysfunction are often siloed into disciplines by functional areas. For example, educators address cognitive skills and physical therapists address only motor skills. But our study supported the idea that early learning that combines movement with problem solving can advance cognitive skills, problem-solving, and fine motor skills, all areas important to eventual success in school.

What do your results tell us about how the intervention is working and its implications for implementation?  

Because we found that adding problem-solving and cognitive challenges to our motor intervention did not slow progress in motor skills, we believe that integrating motor and cognitive challenges may be better for overall development than separating these areas during service delivery. We also had a strong fidelity of intervention program, assuring that the key ingredients of the intervention were adhered to, and that it was clearly different from usual care. However, one implication is that early interventionists need further training to deliver this type of service to families of children with significant motor delays.

Please tell us about your current and ongoing work on START-Play. How are you moving forward with these positive results?

We are currently examining the data from our long-term follow-up study that we conducted with supplemental funding through NCSER. We are also working on a study, funded through NIH, to look at a dose-matched comparison of START-Play intervention with a formalized version of usual care called MORE-PT for infants with cerebral palsy. In addition, we have developed an online continuing education course that translates our findings from the original START-Play study and will help therapists to implement the key ingredients of START-Play in early intervention. We are excited to work on implementation and hope to gain further understanding of the implementation process as we move forward.

Regina (Reggie) Harbourne is the director of the infant development lab and associate professor of physical therapy in the Rangos School of Health Sciences, Duquesne University. This blog was produced by Amy Sussman, the program officer for NCSER’s Early Intervention and Early Learning program.


[1] Manuscripts are submitted for review for this award before they are published. Although AACPDM has first option to publish the wining manuscripts, the paper is not yet published or available publicly.

What Do NCES Data Tell Us About America’s Kindergartners?

Happy Get Ready for Kindergarten Month! 

For more than 20 years, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has been collecting information about kindergartners’ knowledge and skills as part of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Studies (ECLS) program.

The first ECLS, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998–99 (ECLS-K), focused on children in kindergarten in the 1998–99 school year. At the time the ECLS-K began, no large national study focused on education had followed a cohort of children from kindergarten entry through the elementary school years. Some of today’s commonly known information about young children, such as the information about kindergartners’ early social and academic skills shown in the infographics below, comes out of the ECLS-K. For example, we all know that children arrive at kindergarten with varied knowledge and skills; the ECLS-K was the first study to show at a national level that this was the case and to provide the statistics to highlight the differences in children’s knowledge and skills by various background factors.



The second ECLS kindergarten cohort study, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010–11 (ECLS-K:2011), is the ECLS-K’s sister study. This study followed the students who were in kindergarten during the 2010–11 school year. The ECLS-K:2011, which began more than a decade after the inception of the ECLS-K, allows for comparisons of children in two nationally representative kindergarten classes experiencing different policy, educational, and demographic environments. For example, significant changes that occurred between the start of the ECLS-K and the start of the ECLS-K:2011 include the passage of No Child Left Behind legislation, a rise in school choice, and an increase in English language learners. 

From the parents of children in the ECLS-K:2011, we learned how much U.S. kindergartners like school, as shown in the following infographic.



The ECLS program studies also provide information on children’s home learning environments and experiences outside of school that may contribute to learning. For example, we learned from the ECLS-K:2011 what types of activities kindergartners were doing with their parents at least once a month (see the infographic below).


Infographic titled How do kindergarteners like school?


What’s next for ECLS data collections on kindergartners? NCES is excited to be getting ready to launch our next ECLS kindergarten cohort study, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2023–24 (ECLS-K:2024)

Before the ECLS-K:2024 national data collections can occur, the ECLS will conduct a field test—a trial run of the study to test the study instruments and procedures—in the fall of 2022.

If you, your child, or your school are selected for the ECLS-K:2024 field test or national study, please participate! While participation is voluntary, it is important so that the study can provide information that can be used at the local, state, and national levels to guide practice and policies that increase every child’s chance of doing well in school. The ECLS-K:2024 will be particularly meaningful, as it will provide important information about the experiences of children whose early lives were shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Watch this video to learn more about participation in the ECLS-K:2024. For more information on the ECLS studies and the data available on our nation’s kindergartners, see the ECLS homepage, review our online training modules, or email the ECLS study team.

 

By Jill Carlivati McCarroll, NCES