Better day care boosts skills - Children

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Dec, 2001

Youngsters who spent their first four and a half years in higher-quality child care arrangements scored better on tests of cognitive skills and language ability than did those in lower-quality care, according to findings from the largest long-term study of child care in the U.S. Aletha C. Huston, Priscilla Pond Flawn Regents Professor of Child Development, The University of Texas at Austin, one of the principal investigators in the study, commenting on how parents could determine the level of quality in a particular day care setting, indicates that "You need to look at the kind of human interactions that are going on, more than the pretty toys and fancy physical setting." She says parents should try to observe "the way care givers interact, whether they talk to the children, what kinds of activities the children are engaged in. If the children spend a lot of time wandering around doing nothing, that is a bad sign. If they don't want you to observe, then you should have concerns about the place."

Huston believes researchers found more-advanced cognitive skills and language ability in youngsters in higher-quality centers "because adults in high-quality settings provide more language stimulation. They talk to, and listen to, children. And they respond sensitively to children's interests and needs. They also have regular times that they read to children, and activities that are appropriate for intellectual development."

In the study, quality was assessed in two different ways. Researchers looked at aspects of child care that states can regulate, such as training and adult-to-child ratio, and did direct, on-site observation. They found:

* Children in centers where caregivers responded to the children's questions, asked kids questions, read, taught, or simply talked to them received higher scores on intellectual and language tests than did those in settings with less language stimulation.

* Youngsters who spent more time watching TV got lower scores on tests of math problems, had smaller vocabularies, and had more behavior issues.

* Kids in more-stimulating care environments got higher scores on tests for vocabulary and short-term memory and attention. They also were better able to get along well with their peers.