Early Childhood Development and Educational Policy
Since the 1986-87 school year I have been the Principal Investigator for a longitudinal study of
academic progress and development of children in the public schools of Washington, D.C. I
began this study when the high school graduating Class of 2000 was only 4-years-old, adding 4-year-olds from the Classes of 2001 and 2002 in subsequent years. Children in this study were
enrolled in free, full-school-day public pre-kindergarten programs or Head Start programs in the
District of Columbia Public Schools. The study was initiated in response to policymakers'
concerns about an unusually high first grade failure rate despite large expenditures for early
childhood education programs in this school system. Although a district-wide, competency-based curriculum for pre-kindergarten was in place when the study began, my observations of
classrooms indicated a great deal of natural variability in actual classroom practices. Therefore, I
developed the Pre-K Survey of Beliefs and Practices (Marcon, 1987) to measure this variability
and used cluster analysis of Pre-K and Head Start teacher responses to identify three different
approaches present within the public school programs serving 4-year-olds in our nation's capital.
These approaches were labeled as child-initiated, academically-directed, or middle-of-the-road
(a combination approach). Classrooms representing these three different approaches were
selected at random from across the different geographical areas of Washington, D.C., and
children were randomly sampled from these classrooms proportionate to enrollment in 4-year-old
programs in each region of the city. This is a quasi-experimental (correlational) field study
because children were not randomly assigned to classroom interventions. A cross-sequential
design was used (with two replication cohorts added to the original Class of 2000 sample) in
order to verify findings. When the first cohort of children entered kindergarten, as many as
possible were matched with a same-sex classmate who had not attended preschool prior to
kindergarten entry. The initial study followed children into first grade, and subsequent follow-up
studies have examined children's academic progress and development at major educational
transition points (i.e., primary to upper elementary grades, elementary to junior high school). In
addition to examining the impact of different early childhood education approaches, this study
explores a wide range of other factors (i.e., parent involvement, retention in grade, risk-factors).
The study is on-going and I plan to continue this research beyond
anticipated high school graduation dates of the first two cohorts. Publications and presentations
related to this study's findings are listed in my vitae.
Other Research Interests
In addition to applied research with policy implications for early intervention, I am interested in language development (especially pragmatics), attachment, and connections between physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development. Questions of an applied nature are particularly intriguing to me. I use a multidisciplinary approach to exploring new areas, and enjoy being able to use my creativity in designing research strategies and tools that will allow me to address interesting and relevant questions.