Boston Early Childhood Research Practice Partnership

The Boston Universal Pre-K study is a mixed-methods implementation study of the expanded universal Pre-K program in Boston. In April 2019 the City of Boston announced a historic investment in expanding high-quality universal preschool for four year olds through a combination of community-based programs and existing public school seats. We are studying the implementation of this mixed-delivery program with an emphasis on identifying the barriers and facilitators of scaling quality programming. This study has evolved over the course of the pandemic and the study team has worked closely with...

The Expanding Children’s Early Learning (ExCEL) project is part of the Early Learning Network, an Institute of Education Sciences-funded network examining current policies and practices, identifying malleable factors associated with early learning and achievement, and developing tools to assess early learning instruction, interactions, and environments. The Boston ExCEL project is led by MDRC and has followed a cohort of Boston students from Pre-K to 5th grade. The longitudinal study is focused on identifying malleable factors that promote children’s success into elementary schools, including...

The Boston Early Adulthood study is the second phase of an ongoing study, which follows 12,740 children who applied to the Boston Pre-K program between 2007 and 2011. The Boston Pre-K program is somewhat unique in the national landscape as it uses evidence- and play-based language, literacy, and math-focused curriculum, pays teachers on the same scale as their K-12 peers, provides coaching supports to teachers, and is open to children in Boston, regardless of family characteristics.  The first students to experience the program are just reaching early adulthood, allowing our team to estimate...

The Sustaining the Boost project was an Institute of Education Sciences-funded study of the Boston Public Schools Pre-K program. It was a retrospective efficacy study of the short- and medium-term impacts of the Boston public Pre-K program on key child academic and school progress outcomes through the end of third grade. The team used new and innovative methods that have not yet been applied to public Pre-K programs, including a lottery-based identification strategy and impact variation across sites. Key outcomes in the study were children’s persistence in the Boston Public Schools from K-3,...