Zhiling M. Shea

Publications

Do Prekindergarten Quality Benchmarks Affect Fourth-Grade Academic Outcomes? - Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Even with rapid and widespread expansion of state prekindergarten (pre-K) programs and improvements in these programs, there exists no population-level information regarding how a host of pre-K quality components can affect student medium-term (i.e., primary grade) academic outcomes at the state level. I leveraged multiple national datasets to estimate the effects of pre-K quality on seven cohorts of fourth grade students’ math and English Language Arts (ELA) outcomes, including the National Institute for Early Education and Research (NIEER) for pre-K quality benchmark information between 2001 and present, and the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA) and National Assessment for Education Progress (NAEP) for student fourth grade outcomes in corresponding years of pre-K. Using differences in quality benchmarks within and between all states to estimate effects on fourth grade ELA and math with year and state fixed-effects, I found positive effects of increased quality benchmarks on ELA for Hispanic students and math for Asian students. To explore the mechanism with individual benchmarks, I found that Hispanic students improved their ELA and math performance when state pre-K met the screening and referral services requirement. These findings raise attention to how quality benchmarks can be used to improve academic achievement by policymakers tailoring their pre-K programs to different racial groups.

Examining Heterogeneity in the Impacts of Socio-Emotional Curricula in Preschool: A Quantile Treatment Effect Approach - Frontiers in Psychology

We examine treatment effect heterogeneity using data from the Head Start CARES study, in which a sample of preschool centers was randomly assigned to either one of three curricula interventions targeting socio-emotional (SE) skills (i.e., emotional knowledge, problem-solving skills, and executive functions) or to continue using their “business-as-usual” curriculum. Most existing research estimates only mean differences between treatment and control groups, and uses simple subgroup analyses to assess treatment heterogeneity, which may overlook important variation in treatment effects across the ex-post outcome distribution. We use quantile treatment effects analyses to understand the impacts of these curricular interventions at various parts of the outcome distribution, from the 1st percentile to the 99th percentile, to understand who benefits most from SE curricula interventions. Results show positive impacts of the curricula interventions on emotional knowledge and problem-solving skills, but not equally across the full skill distribution. Children in the upper half of the emotional knowledge distribution and at the higher end of the problem-solving skills distribution gain more from the curricula. As in the study’s original mean-comparison analyses, we find no impacts on children’s executive function skills at any point in the skills distribution. Our findings add to the growing literature on the differential effects of curricula interventions for preschool programs operating at scale. Importantly, it provides the first evidence for the effects of SE curricula interventions on SE outcomes across children’s outcome skill levels. We discuss implications for early education programs for children with different school readiness skills. (with Jade M. Jenkins).

Equity in Early Education: Racial and Socioeconomic Factors on Children’s Access to High-Quality Preschool Classrooms and Their Social-Emotional Development

This study examines the associations between children's racial and socioeconomic characteristics, the quality of their preschool classrooms, and their social-emotional (SE) development. We used samples (N = 2,610; 44% Hispanic; 49% Female; Mage = 4.5 years) from the Head Start CARES study, which focused on children’s SE development in preschool. Findings reveal significant disparities. White children were more likely to access higher-quality classrooms compared to their Black, Hispanic, and Asian counterparts. Similarly, children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, notably those receiving food stamps or those living in poverty, experienced classrooms of lower quality. Only limited associations were observed between classroom quality and SE outcomes, suggesting that enhancing classroom quality alone may not substantially influence SE development.(with Jiacan He & Siyuan Chen).

Do Preschool Peers Create a Sustaining Environment in Kindergarten Classrooms? Evidence from the ECLS-K: 2011

Using the 2011 Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten, the most recent nationally representative sample of young children, we examine the association between a kindergarten classroom’s proportion of children who attended preschool and student outcomes at the end of the school year. We then examine whether the presence of preschool peers during kindergarten moderates the persistence of preschool skill advantages, and whether teachers’ perceptions of students’ skills and their classroom instruction were mechanisms through which preschool peers influenced students in the same classroom. We found that the percentage of preschool peers in kindergarten did not affect student outcomes or moderate the benefits of preschool attendance. However, we found that a higher percentage of preschool peers was associated with improved teachers’ perceptions of students’ reading skills, and teachers subsequently spent more time on advanced reading content. As public preschool programs are increasing in scale, our work suggests that teachers may be responsive to higher skill levels of children in the classroom, but more work is probably needed to help teachers adapt to children’s improved school readiness skills after preschool. (with Qing Zhang, Jade M. Jenkins, & Tyler W. Watts).

Working papers

Impacts of State Response to Interventions (RTI) on Students’ Disability and Special Education

This study examines the effects of state Response to Intervention (RTI) requirements on students’ learning disability status, and identifications of students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) and placement in educational settings between 2004 and 2018. We find that RTI decreased the proportion of students with SLD. We also find that RTI increased the likelihood of having an identified learning disability for Hispanic children and children of non-White, non-Hispanic, and non-Black racial identities compared to White children. Knowing the national trend of students' disability status, and how they are served and placed in current education settings is critical to design or modify policies that assist these children. The heterogeneous finding is important to bring attention to how special education services disproportionally affect which groups of children are educated. (with Jade M. Jenkins).

Spanish-English Dual Language Learners, Classroom Quality, and Non-Dual Language Peers’ Socioemotional Development

This study examines the peer effects of DLLs in preschool classrooms at Head Start and explores the underlying mechanisms associated with classroom quality. Utilizing data from the HS CARES study, we examined the association between the proportion of DLLs in classrooms and non-DLLs’ socioemotional skills and the moderating effects of classroom quality. We used center fixed effects models and controlled a set of child, teacher, and classroom covariates in our analyses. A negative relationship is observed between more DLLs in the classroom and non-DLLs’ head-to-toe score. Including the classroom quality in the models, we find that non-DLLs improved their emotional situation skills in classrooms with a higher class organization quality and decreased their emotional identification and head-to-toes scores in classrooms with a higher emotional support quality, when the parentage of DLLs increased in a classroom. (with Ye Shen, Penelope Collins, & Dandan Yang).

The Returns of an Additional Year of Schooling: The Case of State-Mandated Kindergarten

We examine the effects of state mandatory kindergarten requirements on long-run educational attainment and labor market outcomes. While in most states kindergarten began as a voluntary program, starting in the 1970s some states evolved to mandating kindergarten attendance. Several changes in state mandatory school entrance laws across states over time provide an opportunity to causally identify the influence of an additional year of ECE on important individual education and labor market outcomes, comparing states with mandatory attendance to those with voluntary attendance. We exploit this natural experimental design using data from the ACS 2008-2017. Findings indicate no overall impacts of mandatory kindergarten policies on educational attainment in adulthood, but substantial heterogeneous impacts, with women and Hispanic and Black individuals benefiting most in terms of educational attainment, poverty reduction, and income. Our findings indicate that states’ investments in universal early education pay off in the long run, and are equity enhancing. (with Jade M. Jenkins & Maria Rosales-Rueda).

Dissertation

My dissertation aims to address these critical questions regarding how effective ECE policies and programs serve disadvantaged children. It will provide insight into not only in the implementation of state disability policy but also the effective skill-specific interventions and classroom processes for disadvantaged children in preschool programs. It also contributes to the advancement of casually driven research in the field of ECE by using national large-scale datasets and rigorous designs such as differences-in-differences, quantile treatment effect, and instrumental variables.