The effects of early childhood education on literacy scores using data from a new Brazilian assessment tool

• Main Authors: Fabiana de Felício, Rafael Terra, Ana Carolina Zoghbi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade de São Paulo 2012-03-01
• Series: Estudos Econômicos
• Subjects: early childhood education; literacy scores; Propensity Score Matching
• Online Access: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0101-41612012000100004&lng=en&tlng=en

The aim of this study was to identify the effects of early childhood education (ECE) on literacy scores of 2nd grade students in elementary school. To do that, the Provinha Brasil was administered in Sertãozinho-SP, in conjunction with a socioeconomic questionnaire. Despite external validity problems, the evaluation of the effects of ECE in one municipality is advantageous, as we can estimate the effects of one kind of treatment. Other studies ignore this fact. Often, they estimate an average effect of various treatments effects (not just one), as they use data from different municipalities where ECE programs have different levels of quality. The OLS and Propensity Score Matching results show that students who started school at the ages of 5, 4, and 3 years had literacy scores between 12.22 and 19.54 points higher than those who began school at the age of 6 years or later.