CAS 2012 Research Brief #5 Curricular Approaches among Child Care Center Directors in Chicago West and North Side ZIP CODES

Introduction The 2012 Chicago Area Study surveyed 229 center directors in 33 ZIP Courricular Approaches among Child Care Center Directors in Chicago West and North Side ZIP The 2012 Chicago Area Study surveyed 229 center directors in 33 ZIP Codes on the West and North sides of Chicago. All centers and preschools that served three and four year olds in these ZIP Codes were eligible, except those located in the public schools. Eligible settings included preschools in churches, private schools, and community organizations as well as preschool programs and full-day care in standalone childcare centers. Fully 70% of eligible directors participated in the study. For simplicity, we refer to all participants as “centers.” We prepared a set of initial research briefs to disseminate basic study findings. Each of these briefs describes a set of data collected in the survey for the sample as a whole and across five types of ZIP Codes. The five ZIP Code types allow us to provide a basic portrait of differences in center characteristics depending on the race-ethnicity and income of the community. The five types of ZIP Codes are: (1) mixed race, low income, (2) majority non-Hispanic Black, low income, (3) majority Hispanic, low income, (4) majority non-Hispanic White, middle-income, and (5) majority non-Hispanic White, high income. The cutoffs between low/middle and between middle/high incomes are $48,500 and $70,000 respectively (about two and three times the federal poverty line for a family of four in 2011). We define a location as being a majority of one race-ethnicity if the ZIP Code is comprised of at least 50% of that racial/ethnic group (see CAS 2012 Research Brief #1 for additional details). This CAS 2012 Research Brief #5 summarizes directors’ responses to questions about their use of child-centered and teacher-directed approaches to learning, their engagement in specific reading and math activities, and their use of particular curricula.

This research brief provides a descriptive portrait of the curricular approaches used in preschool classrooms across Chicago’s West and North sides. Several important findings emerge, which we will examine further in future reports. One clear result is that the traditional emphasis in the early childhood field on child-initiated learning remains common in the West and North sides of Chicago, with over three-quarters of directors reporting this was “very much” the case in their programs. Direct instruction showed greater variation across settings, with about onethird each reporting little, some and very much of an emphasis on this approach. This result suggests that the field’s move toward integrating child-initiated and teacher-directed instruction may not have reached all centers in the Chicago area. In other parts of our study, we talked in-depth with directors about these approaches, and we will delve into these finding in a later report. The popularity of Creative Curriculum is also clear, with it being used in 8 out of 10 centers. This curriculum is common in publicly funded Preschool for All and Head Start classrooms, which likely explains its particularly high usage in low-income ZIP Codes. Strikingly, nearly every center located in majority Black, low-income areas used Creative Curriculum, and few used any other curricular approaches. In contrast, centers located in majority White, high-income areas were least likely to use Creative Curriculum, and most likely to follow the Montessori and Reggio Emilia approaches. Interestingly, center directors in both of these areas (low-income, majority Black and high-income, majority White) reported the lowest frequency of math activities, and reading activities were also least common in high-income, majority White areas. Whereas in the most affluent areas such activities may be less needed, to the extent that children have already learned these skills at home, their relative absence in the poorest areas may limit preschools’ ability to narrow school readiness gaps. Again, our future work will examine this issue in greater depth.