Impacts of Early Childhood Education on Medium- and Long-Term Educational Outcomes

22 studies, 1960-2016

High-quality early-childhood education studies, restricted to attainment-type outcomes measured at school age or later.

Deliberately excludes cognitive test scores in favour of institutional/attainment outcomes — the outcome class that survives fadeout.

The best evidence for the 'attainment persists even when test scores don't' pattern: meaningful reductions in special-education placement and grade retention and higher graduation, in the same literature where test-score effects vanish. Grade C because the pool mixes designs — but the pattern is corroborated by the Boston lottery.

Mixed experimental and quasi-experimental base; the attainment outcomes are administrative rather than self-reported, which helps.

These attainment effects appear even in studies where cognitive-test impacts had faded to null — the empirical basis for treating skills and attainment as separate outcome classes.