By Nadra Nittle, The Chronicle of Social Change, July 1, 2020

Highly trained, well-paid preschool teachers with low-student ratios, clean, safe classrooms with blocks, playdough, art supplies and outdoor spaces where kids can run and play could be key to closing the racial achievement gap, according to a new Rutgers University study.

The June policy analysis by the university’s National Institute of Early Education Research concludes that preschools have more influence on the academic trajectory of children of color than previously thought — a finding unfortunately timed with the rolling back of many preschool initiatives due to dire budget cuts amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Co-authors Allison Friedman-Krauss and Steven Barnett approached their research for “Access to High-Quality Early Education and Racial Equity” with one question in mind: “What would happen if all children attend pre-K programs that are of uniformly high quality?” By studying children in programs that provided such quality in Boston and Tulsa, Oklahoma, they found that the preschool experience significantly narrowed reading and math skills gaps between Black and white children by the onset of kindergarten. Just one year of high quality preschool made a difference, the study found, virtually eliminating the racial reading gap and cutting the math gap in half.

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