Photo: Alessandra Hartkopf for Strategies for Children

Study after study keeps coming to the same conclusion: Early education works.

Now new research drives home the point: Early education provides benefits that last through high school.

That’s the result of a meta-study published by the American Educational Research Association (AERA).

“It is exciting that our results show that the benefits of early childhood education are sustained through elementary school and beyond,” study coauthor Dana McCoy, an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said in a press release.

“These results provide further evidence for the potential individual and societal benefits of expanding early childhood education programming in the United States.”

The researchers conducted a meta-study of 22 early education studies conducted between 1960 and 2016.

“Although previous research reviews had focused on programs targeting 3- and 4-year-olds, the AERA brief examined services offered to children between birth and age 5,” an article on the education news website The 74 reports.

Contributions to the study came from Harvard as well as New York University, the RAND Corporation, the University of California, Irvine, the University of Washington, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

The study found that “participation in high-quality classroom-based ECE programs reduced future special education placement by 8.1 percentage points, decreased grade retention by 8.3 percentage points, and increased high school graduation rates by 11.4 percentage points,” the press release notes.

As the 74 explains, letting these problems fester is a huge waste of public money:

“The estimated cost of placing a student in special education classes is roughly $8,000, and holding a student back a grade costs about $12,000, according to the report. Meanwhile, each of the 373,000 American high schoolers who drop out each year earn almost $700,000 less over the course of their careers than peers with diplomas.”

While spending on early childhood has increased in many states – “In 2016, state investments in early childhood education totaled $7.4 billion to support nearly 1.5 million three- and four-year-olds.” – poor children are being left behind.

“… research has found that more than half of low-income three- and four-year-old children remain out of center-based care. Negative education outcomes are much more frequent for children growing up in low-income families.”

The 74 adds:

“Although providing excellent preschool programs to the millions of children currently without them is an expensive proposition, economists have recently argued that later-life payoffs — better health, lower rates of incarceration, and higher earnings for participants — justify the costs many times over.”

The moral of this research story? Invest generously in high-quality early education. It’s good for kids, for taxpayers, for the economy, and for society.

Southern California radio station KPCC covers the story here.