Studies Find Payoff, Drawbacks Persist for Pupils in Preschool and Child Care

Both the positive and the negative effects of spending long hours in organized child care and preschool are evident even after children move into elementary school, two new studies show.

The first paper—the latest from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development’s Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development—shows that benefits children experience by being exposed to high-quality child care, such as higher mathematics, vocabulary, and memory skills, appear to remain at least through 3rd grade.

The closely watched, federally financed project began in 1991 with a sample of more than 1,300 newborns. This newest research focuses on 972 children who remained in the...