College and Career Readiness: The Importance of Early Learning

research.policy@act.org for more information. © 2013 by ACT, Inc. All rights reserved. ACT® and ACT Explore® are registered trademarks of ACT, Inc. ACT Core Practice™ is a trademark of ACT, Inc. 3899 www.act.org/research-policy Policy Report ACT Research & Policy February 2013 College and Career Readiness: The Importance of Early Learning Chrys Dougherty As our nation strives to have all students graduate from high school ready for college and other postsecondary learning opportunities, we have to confront the reality that we are far from achieving this goal. The problem is most severe with economically disadvantaged students. For example, in states where all eleventh graders take the ACT® college readiness assessment, only 45% of low-income students in 2012 met the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks in English, 30% in reading, 21% in mathematics, and 13% in science.1 For many students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, learning gaps appear in early childhood.2 Large numbers of disadvantaged students enter kindergarten behind in early reading and mathematics skills, oral language development, vocabulary, and general knowledge. This situation poses a challenge for intervention models that presume that 15% or so of students need short-term additional help, 5% or so need long-term intervention, and the regular academic program will take care of the rest.3 In cases where the great majority of students are academically behind and need major assistance, the regular academic program must be upgraded to deliver a richer curriculum to all students. Such a curriculum is highly beneficial for all students, but is especially critical for disadvantaged students, who often arrive from home with limited knowledge and vocabulary. School districts must develop a system of practices that enable such a curriculum to be taught effectively.4 Why Early Learning Is Important That learning gaps emerge early, particularly among disadvantaged students, is one of the better-documented facts in education.5 Students who do not have a good start usually do not thrive later on. That is due not only to the fact that students in stressful environments with limited learning opportunities often remain in those environments, but also because early learning itself facilitates later learning—students who already know more about a topic often have an easier time learning additional information on the same topic, and early exposure to knowledge can stimulate students to want to learn more.6 Getting students off to a good start in preschool and the elementary grades is vitally important for several reasons: Learning takes time. Research studies have addressed the value of allowing sufficient time per topic for students to adequately master the topic.7 This implies that subject-matter learning should be spread out over many years to permit a range of topics to be addressed in adequate depth. For example, one well-known curriculum for the elementary and middle grades spreads the study of US History out over all of those grades, covering fewer topics in greater depth in each grade.8 Learning is cumulative. In a well-designed curriculum, learning in the upper grades builds on prior learning in the lower grades.9 This is most obvious in the case of mathematics, but is also true for other content areas such as science, history, geography, literature, and the arts. For example, students learning about glucose metabolism in high school biology classes benefit from having learned the necessary prior knowledge about chemistry in elementary and middle school. 2 ACT Research & Policy College and Career Readiness: The Importance of Early Learning Student interests often develop at an early age. Students with the good fortune to be exposed to rich content in science, history, and other subjects at a young age may develop an interest in those subjects. Interest, in turn, leads to greater learning.10 Disadvantaged students often depend on their schools for this exposure, since their access to content outside of school may be limited. Simply having the content available in libraries and on the Internet is not enough, because children need adults to guide them to the content and help them understand it.11 Empirical evidence shows the difficulty of catching students up in middle and high school. Several studies have explored the importance of preparation prior to eighth grade for students to have a reasonable chance of meeting college readiness benchmarks by the end of high school.12 For example, students who were far off track in eighth grade had only a 10% chance in reading, 6% chance in science, and 3% chance in mathematics of reaching the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks by twelfth grade. In higher poverty schools those numbers were 6%, 3%, and 3%, respectively.13 Results were similar for students catching up between fourth and eighth grade.14 The harder it is to get off­track students on track in the upper grades, t