Boston Early Childhood Research Practice Partnership

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...

Preparing to Succeed was the first study for the Boston Early Childhood Research Practice Partnership and, in many ways, it kicked off our long-term partnership. The study examined the effects of the Boston Public Schools Pre-K program in 2008-2009, after BPS made evidence-based investments in the quality of the program. The study found Boston Pre-K program has some of the largest positive effects on kindergarten readiness of any Pre-K program in the country. Related publications are linked...

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,...

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...