On the positive side, both high-quality care, regardless of type, and center care, independent of quality, appeared to boost intellectual growth, memory and language skills. Differences were small but statistically significant.
Those in lower quality care, for example, fell into the 42nd percentile, on average, in pre-academic skills, while those in higher quality care averaged the 57th percentile, Burchinal said. Children with fewer than 10 hours a week of center care averaged the 44th percentile in language skills, while those with 30 or more hours a week fell into the 57 percentile, on average.
"This work documents more strongly than ever before that better educated and trained teachers are providing more language stimulation so that that the children they take care of do better on tests regardless of family background," Cox said. "Quality indeed makes a difference."
Researchers also found, however, that children who spent more time in care outside the home somewhat more aggressive toward other children and disobedient or defiant toward adults at 54 months and later when they were in kindergarten. They also were more likely to bully, fight with or act mean to others. "We saw that three times as many kids with extensive child care -- 30 or more hours per week on average between birth and 54 months -- had behavioral problems when compared with compared with children with little child care -- less than 10 hours per week on average," Burchinal said. "That was 16 percent of subjects in the former group vs. 5 percent in the latter.
"At the same time, though, we want to emphasize that these were not extreme behaviors,
were well within the normal range and might or might not disappear entirely later on," she said. "By the time the children were in kindergarten, differences had narro
'"/>
Contact: David Williamson
David_Williamson@unc.edu
919-962-8596
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
18-Apr-2001