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Research Article

Academic performance of K-12 students in an online-learning environment for mathematics increased during the shutdown of schools in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing – original draft

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

Roles Formal analysis, Supervision, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, United States of America

• Markus Wolfgang Hermann Spitzer, 
• Sebastian Musslick

• Published: August 3, 2021
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255629
• Reader Comments

The shutdown of schools in response to the rapid spread of COVID-19 poses risks to the education of young children, including a widening education gap. In the present article, we investigate how school closures in 2020 influenced the performance of German students in a curriculum-based online learning software for mathematics. We analyzed data from more than 2,500 K-12 students who computed over 124,000 mathematical problem sets before and during the shutdown, and found that students’ performance increased during the shutdown of schools in 2020 relative to the year before. Our analyses also revealed that low-achieving students showed greater improvements in performance than high-achieving students, suggesting a narrowing gap in performance between low- and high-achieving students. We conclude that online learning environments may be effective in preventing educational losses associated with current and future shutdowns of schools.

Citation: Spitzer MWH, Musslick S (2021) Academic performance of K-12 students in an online-learning environment for mathematics increased during the shutdown of schools in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. PLoS ONE 16(8): e0255629. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255629

Editor: Giovanni Petri, ISI Foundation, ITALY

Received: March 19, 2021; Accepted: July 20, 2021; Published: August 3, 2021

Copyright: © 2021 Spitzer, Musslick. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.

Funding: Initials of the authors who received each award: SM Grant numbers awarded to each author: 61434 The full name of each funder: John Templeton Foundation URL of each funder website: templeton.org The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

1. Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a sudden shutdown of schools in 2020, affecting more than 1.6 billion students in over 190 countries (UNESCO 2020 [ 32 ]). The shutdown required teachers, students and parents to rapidly adopt to a new homeschooling situation, lasting from a few weeks to several months, depending on governmental policy. While the full consequences of this outage will take years or even decades to unfold, preliminary data highlight immediate effects on student’s academic performance and well-being: the COVID-19 pandemic required students to be educated from home which has been linked to lower performance on national tests [ 1 – 10 ] (note that reference [ 10 ] is pending peer-review), higher stress and anxiety [ 2 , 3 ], lower sleep quality [ 4 ], as well as a general decrease in student’s wellbeing [ 5 – 7 ]. However, little is known about the pandemic’s impact on the performance of K-12 students in online learning environments—educational tools that became popular complements to traditional classroom work over the past years. Here, we seek to investigate whether the performance of K-12 students in mathematics—quantified in terms of error rate and difficulty of assigned problem sets in an online learning environment—changed during the shutdown of schools in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Preliminary studies investigating the effects of the shutdown paint a negative picture, suggesting a detrimental influence on academic performance and general wellbeing. For instance, scores on national exams in the Netherlands have been found to decrease by three percentile points after the shutdown of schools compared to the years before [ 8 ]. Another study, involving students in Germany, reported that general screen time (time spent on television, computer games or social media) increased by more than one hour a day and study time was cut in half as a consequence of the school closures [ 9 ]. Reduced study time has been linked to significant decreases in curriculum-based learning for children, adolescents and young adults, as families report to struggle with educating their children at home [ 10 ]. Finally, more time spent at home has been linked to increased rates of child abuse [ 6 , 7 ].

An important consequence of school shutdowns concerns an increase in educational differences between students in the same cohort [ 8 , 11 ]. A recent study from the UK found that children from low-income families are less likely to participate in online classes, are spending 30% less time learning at home, and have limited access to educational resources [ 10 ]. These inequalities in learning styles are reported to widen achievement disparities between low-performing and high-performing students [ 8 , 10 , 11 ]. Another study, based on 55 million library check-outs in Denmark, showed that families with higher socioeconomic status (SES) borrowed more books than families with lower SES, and that this difference increased during the shutdown of schools [ 12 ]. Given positive correlations between SES and mathematical achievements, as well as higher salaries during adulthood [ 13 ] such differential effects on the education of students with different SES are troubling—especially in light of the “Every Student Succeeds Act” [ 14 ] which aims to provide equal opportunities for students in poverty, for minorities, students with limited language skills, and those who need special education in the United States. Results from these studies comport with the observation that students with a small advantage in academic performance continue to benefit, while those with a slight disadvantage continue to lose ground, as has been reported for reading [ 15 ], vocabulary acquisition [ 16 ] and mathematics [ 17 – 19 ]. This observation, commonly referred to as the Matthew effect —referencing the biblical assertion “the rich get richer” in the Gospel of Matthew [ 20 , 21 ]—can be attributed to an interaction between motivational beliefs and the capacity for self-regulated learning [ 22 , 23 ]. For instance, theories of self-regulated learning suggest that students with lower skills, e.g., in mathematics, may adopt maladaptive beliefs about their own self-efficacy in learning, hampering further achievement [ 24 , 25 ]. Mitigating the Matthew effect in the midst of homeschooling situation precipitated by the pandemic may require adaptive educational practices that minimize performance differences between low-performing and high-performing students [ 17 ].

Online learning platforms provide solutions to the new homeschooling situation and concomitant demands for remote teaching. Here, we analyzed data of a curriculum-based (grades four to ten) online learning software for mathematics, used within the class context as a complement to traditional classroom work (see methods for a detailed description of the software and data collection). Its use increased remarkably during the school closures, with three times more students who studied with the software (see S1 Fig in S1 File ), reflecting the need for online teaching methods in lieu of traditional teaching at school. In this study, we analyzed data from this learning software, to investigate the effects of school closures on the performance of students in problem sets assigned by their teachers before and during the shutdown of schools in Germany. We also examined potential effects on changes in performance depending on how well students performed before the shutdown.

Based on a growing number of studies reporting detrimental effects of the pandemic on students’ performance and well-being (see above), we hypothesized that the academic performance of K-12 students decreased during the school closures in 2020 relative to the previous year. To test this hypothesis, we analyzed differences in the absolute error rate of students on mathematical problem sets between 2020 and 2019. We analyzed these differences in a within-group analysis (Analysis 1a) controlling for the number of problem sets each student computed, the number of repetitions on each problem set, and overall experience with the software. Since absolute error rate can vary as a function of problem set difficulty, we also assessed how school closures affected the error rate of students relative to a reference group (relative error rate), using the same within-group cohort (Analysis 1b). We also conducted a within-group analysis to examine whether problem sets assigned by teachers were associated with a lower difficulty during the shutdown compared to the previous year. Finally, according to the Matthew effect, high-performing should be less affected by this than low-performing students, resulting in a widening performance gap. Thus, we expected that students with comparably low performance in 2019 would show greater performance decrements as a consequence of school closures in 2020, relative to students with comparably high performance in 2019, suggesting a widening performance gap between students. To test this hypothesis, we assessed the average relative error rate of each student in 2020 as a function their average relative error rate in 2019, controlling for number of problem set assignments and problem set repetitions (Analysis 2). To foreshadow results from these analyses, we observed—contrary to our expectations—a decrease in students’ error rate and relative error rate, reflecting higher performance during the shutdown of schools in 2020 compared to the same time frame in 2019. In addition, we observed a decrease in performance differences between low-performing students and high-performing students from 2019 to 2020.

2.1. Software

The Bettermarks software has been distributed to schools in 2008 and covers the curricula of mathematics in Germany from classes 4–10, with 100 book topics (i.e., more general themes, such as “Basic calculations of percentages”, or “Advanced calculations of fractions”). The software comprises book topics from a variety of mathematical topics such as number theory, algebra, combinations, geometry, probability, and statistics. In addition, problem sets cover various mathematical competencies including (but not limited to) solving equations, simplifying equations, retrieval of mathematical laws and plotting (see S2 Fig in S1 File ). The software is distributed over all states in Germany and used in different types of schools, such as public schools (Gymnasium, Realschule, Hauptschule, and Gesamtschule) and private schools. Thus, the students who use Bettermarks may represent the average population of students in Germany. A book topic provides the student with an introduction to the topic and includes between four and 21 problem sets, each of which entails eight individual problems on average. The software can be used as a complement to a traditional curriculum in mathematics. The bettermarks software is used to practice mathematical problem sets. Teachers use the software to assign problem sets which students may compute in class (in the event that teachers provide them with time to compute these problem sets during their classes), or at home as homework assignments. Teachers may also use the software as an additional practice tool on top of other pencil paper assignments. Fig 1 illustrates the interface of Bettermarks, including the selection of book topics, the selection and calculation of problem sets, as well as mechanisms for feedback. Please see S2 Fig in S1 File for more problem set examples on other mathematical topics. Problem sets can be assigned in two ways: (a) teachers assign problem sets to students, or (b) students self-select their own problem sets. In this study, we restricted our analysis to problem sets assigned by schoolteachers. Independent of the assignment policy, students receive feedback regarding their accuracy on computed problem sets and may request up to one hint for solving a problem. Students may repeat a problem set; however, the parameterization of individual problems changes with every new attempt. If students receive negative feedback on their first attempt of a problem within a problem set, they can make a second attempt on that problem. The collected data includes information about (a) which problem set was computed, (b) the number of distinct problem sets that each student computed for a given book topic, and (c) the number of times a student repeated a given problem set. Teachers registered themselves and their students with pseudonyms at the learning platform and thus, only anonymized data was collected from students (for another detailed description of the software see [ 26 ]).

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(1) Teachers and students can select from a library with over 100 different books. Each book contains an introduction as well as different mathematical problem sets. (2) A problem set contains several individual problems. (3) When students compute a problem and submit an answer, they receive immediate feedback on whether their answer is right or wrong. Students have two attempts on each problem. (4) Students may request up to one hint when computing a problem.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255629.g001

2.2. Identification strategy

We restricted analyses to two distinct groups of students. For the within-group analysis, we considered a group of German students who used the software both before the shutdown (March 15 th , 2019 until June 15 th , 2019) and during the shutdown (March 15 th , 2020 until June 15 th , 2020). This group comprised data of 2,556 students (314 school classes) who calculated a total of 124,597 problem sets (1,234 unique problem sets). All problem sets that these students computed were assigned by their teachers as homework. Due to the anonymization requirements of the learning software, we did not include any demographic information into our analysis. Thus, the sample was composed of students from all states in Germany and all types of schools from grades 4 to10.

The second group of students was included as a reference group for problem set difficulty. This group comprised data from 10,693 students (1,373 classes) who used the software before the shutdown (March 15 th , 2019 until June 15 th , 2019) but stopped using the software afterwards. The reference group calculated a total of 209,294 problem sets (1,093 unique problem sets). All problem sets that these students computed were assigned by their teachers as homework. S3 Fig in S1 File illustrates the overall software usage by the students across the two time windows, depicting the distribution of problem sets computed per day.

For each of these groups and each time window, we only included students who computed more than 10 problem sets. In addition, we ensured that each problem set was computed by at least 20 students per group and time window.

2.3. Independent and dependent variables

We considered four independent variables for the analyses reported below. These comprised a categorial variable encoding the time window (labeled time window ; time window 1: March 15 th , 2019 –June 15 th , 2019; time window 2: March 15 th , 2020—June 15 th , 2020), to compare the effect of the shutdown with a similar time period in the previous year. In addition to time window, we considered three covariates: the number of times a student repeated a given problem set (labeled repetitions; treated as interval variable), the total number of assignments a student computed (labeled as assignments; treated as interval variable), as well as the cumulative number of assignments a student computed so far (labeled as cumulative assignments ; treated as interval variable).

We assessed three performance-related dependent variables to investigate the impact of the school closures. First, we computed student’s absolute error rate on each problem set. However, problem sets can vary in terms of their difficulty, and the absolute error rate can depend on the difficulty of a problem set. Thus, we also sought to compute students’ error rate relative to the difficulty of a problem set, and refer to this metric as relative error rate (see below). Since the difficulty of a problem set cannot be easily determined in an objective manner, we computed a performance-based proxy for problem set difficulty . We operationalized the difficulty for a given problem set as the average error rate with which a reference group computed that problem set. We then determined the relative error rate of a student on a given problem set as the difference between their absolute error rate on that problem set and the average error rate of the reference group on that problem set. A negative relative error rate indicates that a student performed better on the problem set relative to the reference group. Conversely, a positive relative error rate suggests that the student performed worse compared to the reference group. Please note that the average error rate of each problem set of the reference group was determined based on the time frame before the pandemic, from March 15 th , 2019 to June 15 th , 2019. Finally, to investigate whether teachers assigned more or less difficult problem sets during the pandemic relative to the year before, we assessed problem set difficulty as a function of time. As noted above, the average error rate on each problem set of the corresponding reference group, determined between March 15 th , 2019 and June 15 th , 2019, served as a proxy for problem set difficulty. That is, if teachers assigned problem sets in which the reference group yielded high error rates in 2019, this would indicate that assigned problem sets were rather difficult. Conversely, if teachers assigned problem sets in which the reference group yielded low error rates in 2019, this would indicate that assigned problem sets were less difficult.

2.4. Data analysis

The statistical analysis was conducted in the R environment for statistical computing. Each analysis involved fitting a linear mixed model to the data, using the lmerTest package [ 27 ]. For each within-group analysis, fixed effects comprised the categorical factor time window (2019/2020), and the two continuous factors repetitions, and assignments. We treated classes and students as random effects by including a nested random intercept for classes and students. In addition, we included a random slope for classes and students with respect to time window, to account for individual differences in the effect of time window on error rate. As noted above, we considered three different dependent variables for the within-group analyses: absolute error rate (Analysis 1a), relative error rate (Analysis 1b) and assigned problem set difficulty (Analysis 1c), resulting in three different statistical models.

We expected students’ absolute and relative error rates to increase during the second time window in which schools were shut down, as indicated by positive regression slopes for the factor time window. In addition, we expected that more repetitions on a problem set, as well as more computed assignments would yield lower absolute and relative error rates for a given student, as would be reflected by negative regression slopes for the repetitions and assignments variables in Analyses 1a-b. In addition, we expected students to perform better with more software usage due to habituation effects, indicated by a negative regression slope for cumulative assignments. Finally, we expected teachers to assign problem sets with a low difficulty to students during the shutdown of schools as compared to the year before, as would be reflected by a negative regression slope for time window in Analyses 1c. We had no expectations for the influence of the repetitions and assignments variables on assigned problem set difficulty.

In a final analysis (Analysis 2), we examined whether the shutdown differentially affected changes in the performance of low-performing and high-performing students with a linear regression. Since the performance measurement was continuous, we define low-performing students as students with a relative error rate above zero (worse than the average of the reference group) and high-performing students with a relative error rate below zero. To investigate changes in the performance difference between low-performing and high-performing students, we regressed the average relative error rate of each student in 2019 against their average relative error rate in 2020, using the same time windows as reported above. To control for differences in the number of problem set assignments and problem set repetitions across students and time windows, we computed the average difference in number of assignments between the two time windows ( assignment difference ) and the average difference in number of repetitions ( repetition difference ) between the two time windows for each student, and included both variables in the regression model.

Fig 2 depicts three different hypothetical outcomes of this analysis. As noted above, the sign of a student’s relative error rate in 2019 indicates whether they performed better (negative relative error rate) or worse (positive relative error rate) on problem sets, relative to a reference group. Thus, students who performed better than the reference group in 2019 are located at the left side of the abscissa in Fig 2 , whereas students who performed worse than the reference group in 2019 are located on the right side of the abscissa. Analogously, low-performing students in 2020 are located on the upper part of the ordinate, whereas high-performing students are located on the lower part of the ordinate. The black line in Fig 2 denotes the null-hypothesis (identity function), proposing that the relative error rate of all students did not change between 2019 and 2020. The green line illustrates a narrowing of performance differences between students: low-performing students show greater reductions in relative error rate than high-performing students, resulting in a negative regression intercept and a regression slope of less than 1. Conversely, the red line exemplifies the Matthew effect: high-performing students in 2019 show greater reductions in relative error rate than low-performing students resulting in a positive regression intercept and a regression slope of greater than 1. We expected that (a) student’s overall relative error rate would increase from 2019 to 2020, as indicated by a positive regression intercept, and that (b) low-performing students showed greater increases in relative error rates than high-performing students, as indicated by a regression slope greater than 1 (see red line in Fig 2 ).

Students’ relative error rate in 2020 (ordinate) is regressed against their relative error rate in 2019 (abscissa). Three different hypothetical outcomes are illustrated in red, black and green (see legend and text).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255629.g002

Note that the performed analysis may be subject to regression dilution bias, that is, a biasing of the regression slope towards zero [ 28 ]. Such a bias can occur in the presence of measurement noise associated with both the predictor and the dependent variable [ 29 ]. Following the suggestion of a reviewer, we computed the 95% confidence interval for the corrected regression coefficient after performing a simple regression of students’ relative error rate in 2019 against their relative error rate in 2020, without consideration of co-variates [ 30 ] (assuming M = ∞). While this correction—like other methods [ 28 , 31 ]—does not require explicit knowledge of the measurement noise, it relies on the simplifying assumption that the measurement noise of the regressor and regressand are uncorrelated. However, since the relative error rate of the same students in 2019 and 2020 represent the same type of measurement performed at two different time points, it is possible that the measurement noise in both variables is correlated, potentially violating the assumption of [ 30 ]. Thus, the estimated correction must be interpreted under consideration of a potential violation of this assumption.

Results from Analyses 1 are summarized in Fig 3 (see S4 Fig in S1 File for monthly descriptive statistics of each dependent variable from January 1 st , 2019 until June 15 th , 2020) and results from Analysis 2 are depicted in Fig 4 . Below, we describe individual effects observed in each of these analyses.

Results from the Analyses 1a-c are depicted. Error rates and relative error rates significantly decreases during the shutdown compared to the same time in the previous year. There was no significant difference in problem set difficulty between the two time windows. Points indicate mean estimates, error bars indicate the standard errors of the mean across students. Connected lines denote that both time windows include results from the same students.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255629.g003

Each data point corresponds to a student, showing their average relative error rate in 2019 (abscissa) and 2020 (ordinate). The green line corresponds to a linear regression fitted to the data. Grey shades indicate the standard error of the mean across students. The black line depicts the identify function (intercept of 0 with a slope of 1) for reference. The intercept of the regression (green) is below zero, indicating that the relative error rate of students decreased from 2019 to 2020. The slope of the regression is below 1, indicating that students categorized as low-performing in 2019 showed greater decrements in relative error rate than students categorized as high-performing (cf. Fig 2 ), suggesting a narrowing performance gap between students.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255629.g004

Analysis 1a: Absolute error rate as a function of time window, repetitions, assignments, and cumulative assignments

The absolute error rate of students did significantly differ between the two time windows ( b = -2.37e-02; t = -8.39; p < .001), with lower absolute error rates during the shutdown than before the shutdown. More repetitions and more total assignments led to lower absolute error rates (repetitions: b = -2.49e-02; t = -32.59; p < .001; assignments: b = -1.83e-03; t = -12.63; p < .001). Against our expectations, more cumulative assignments led to higher absolute error rates ( b = 8.58e-04; t = 20.45; p < .001).

Analysis 1b: Relative error rate as a function of time window, repetitions, assignments and cumulative assignments

Contrary to our expectation, the relative error rate significantly decreased by 2.43% during the school shutdown compared to the same time window in the previous year ( b = -1.21e-02; t = -5.06; p < .001). Students who repeated more problem sets yielded a lower relative error rate than students who engaged in less repetitions ( b = -4.21e-2; t = -61.47; p < .001). Students who computed more assignments yielded a lower relative error rate ( b = -1.56e-3; t = -11.24; p < .001). Unexpectedly, more cumulative assignments yielded a higher relative error rate indicating no habituation effect ( b = 1.03e-4; t = 2.70; p = .006).

Analysis 1c: Problem set difficulty as a function of time window, repetitions, assignments and cumulative assignments

There was no statistically significant difference between the two time windows on problem set difficulty ( b = -1.08e-03; t = -0.56; p = .574). Problem sets that were repeated more frequently were associated with a higher problem set difficulty ( b = 1.46e-02; t = 38.19; p < .001). There was no significant effect of the number of computed problem sets on assigned problem set difficulty ( b = -4.09e-05; t = -1.50; p = .134). A higher number of completed assignments was associated with higher problem set difficulties ( b = 4.05e-04; t = 24.06; p < .001).

Analysis 2: Changes in performance gap between students

Consistent with Analyses 1 and 2, the regression model yielded a negative intercept for relative error rate ( b = - 2.29e-02; t = -8.49; p < .001; see Fig 4 ), indicating that the relative error rate of students decreased in 2020 relative to the year before. In addition, and also contrary to our expectation, the regression coefficient for time window is below 1 ( b = .56; t = 34.02; p < .001), suggesting that low-performing students in 2019 showed greater decrements in relative error rate than high-performing students. Finally, a higher number of problem set assignments and repetitions in 2020 compared to 2019 lead to a lower relative error rates in 2020 (assignments: b = -5.67e-02; t = -12.11; p < .001; repetitions: b = -4.01-e03; t = -3.31; p < .001).

A simple regression without covariates revealed a significant regression intercept with a negative coefficient of b = -0.03 (t = -10.34; p < .001), indicating that students with an average error rate in 2019 had a lower relative error rate in 2020. The uncorrected regression slope is b = 0.55 (t = -32.19; p < .001), and the 95% confidence interval for the corrected regression coefficient is estimated to lie between (0.30, 0.99). Thus, the corrected regression coefficient (below 1.0) indicates a narrowing performance gap.

4. Discussion

In this study, we examined the impact of the school closures on the performance of K12 students in an online learning environment for mathematics—building on a large dataset compromising over 2,500 K-12 students and over 124,000 computed problem sets—by contrasting students’ performance before the shutdown against their performance during the shutdown. The within-group analyses conducted in this study suggest that students’ performance in mathematics improved during the shutdown of schools relative to the year before. The suggested improvements are further evidenced by the observation that teachers assigned more difficult problem sets to students during the school closures as compared to the same time frame in 2019. Finally, the data indicate a narrowing performance gap between students: performance improvements were higher for students categorized as low-performing in 2019 compared to students categorized as high-performing. Altogether, the analyses reported in this study suggests that the shutdown of schools in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic had no detrimental effect on the performance of students in an online learning environment for mathematics.

Results from this study stand in contrast to earlier findings showing mostly detrimental effects of school closures on student’s performance and wellbeing [ 2 – 6 , 8 , 32 ]. Yet, the present study is not the first to demonstrate that students’ performance can improve during the shutdown of schools in 2020. For instance, Gonzalez and colleagues (2020) [ 33 ] analyzed the performance of students on weekly examinations in an online learning class on metabolism and found that students performed better during the shutdown of their University, relative to two cohorts of students who took the same online class in the preceding two years. In addition, they found that more students passed the course, and more students completed their assignments during the shutdown compared to the previous two years. The authors attribute this increase in performance to higher consistency in studying during the shutdown compared to the preceding years. However, the study of Gonzalez and colleagues differs from the present study with respect to students’ age and educational context (college students vs. K-12 students) and subject (metabolism vs. mathematics).

Performance improvements of students in online-learning environments, as observed in this study, could be caused by several factors. First, the performance of students may have improved within the software due to increased usage of similar educational online platforms during the pandemic [ 34 – 37 ]. This is evidenced by two independent meta-analyses reporting that more exposure to online-learning environments can lead to increases in the academic achievement of high school students [ 38 , 39 ]. A similar effect has been observed for college students [ 40 ]. Yet, we observed performance improvements despite accounting for the amount of software usage in our regression analyses. Second, performance improvements may be driven by higher incentives provided by the teachers during the pandemic relative to the year before. Motivational theories of effort allocation suggest a link between incentivization and academic performance [ 41 – 43 ]. Thus, it is possible that the observed improvements in performance stem from higher incentives provided by the teachers during the pandemic relative to the year before. If this was the case, then higher incentives might have affected low-performing students to a larger extend than high-performing students, as indicated by a narrowing performance gap between students. However, prior studies suggests the opposite, demonstrating that incentives have greater effects on high-performing students compared to low-performing students [ 44 , 45 ]. Thus, it remains controversial whether the increased performance of low-performing students in this study can be attributed to higher incentives. Third, it may be that students who used online learning software at home received more tutoring from their parents or caregivers, clouding the authenticity of returned homework assignments. While increased help from parents and caregivers may explain the overall positive effect of school closures observed in this study, further examination is needed to explain why low-performing students showed greater improvements in performance during homeschooling compared to high-performing students. Another potential factor explaining improvements in mathematics during school closures may be rooted in math anxiety, i.e., the feeling of oppression and alarm unconsciously felt by students involved in mathematical tasks. Math anxiety is known to impair cognitive faculties contributing to high performance in such tasks, such as working memory capacity [ 46 ]. Recent work indicates that math anxiety may be absent in home schooling situations compared to more stress-inducing face-to-face settings, even if students were enrolled in STEM-focused curricula [ 47 ]. Thus, homeschooling-related reductions in the performance gap may have been caused by greater reductions in math anxiety for low-performing compared to high-performing students. Finally, it is possible that students—especially low-performing students—may have been less distracted by other students, their teachers, or even potential stressful classroom settings classroom when learning at home, allowing them to focus better on their problem sets. If this were the case, then one would expect to observe benefits of homeschooling in other domains. However, previous studies suggest otherwise [ 8 , 10 , 48 ], showing that performance on national exams in the Netherlands decreased after the shutdown, as evidenced by a large dataset of approximately 350,000 K-12 students. These decreases were more severe for students from less educated families compared to educated families. Thus, the differential effects of school closures on students’ performance in national exams, on the one hand, and in online learning environments, on the other hand, demand further investigation, and may yield answers to important educational questions such as which learning environments are most suited for times in which students need to be taught from home.

In addition to fostering academic performance during school closures, online learning environments may hold promise for reducing performance differences between students, viz. the Matthew effect. Results from Analysis 2 suggest that low-performing students showed greater improvements in performance than high-performing students. One possible explanation for this effect is that online learning environments, like the one investigated in this study, allow teachers to adapt the assignment of problem sets according to students’ needs. Such individualization can be considered a graded form of tracking, that is, the separation of students into different learning groups based on their academic performance. Tracking has been identified as an effective measure to narrow educational gaps [ 49 – 52 ]. For instance, Duflo and colleagues (2011) [ 50 ] demonstrated in a field experiment, including over 300 first grade classes in Kenya, that the division of students into classes based on prior abilities can yield significant improvements in the academic performance of low-performing students. From this perspective, the individualization of problem sets in online-learning environments may complement a variety of other means that have been found to reduce differences in students’ performance and, ultimately, the Matthew effect [ 20 , 21 ], including positive affirmations [ 53 ], the assignment of teachers to students based on teachers’ experience [ 54 – 57 ] or school vouchers [ 58 ].

While the present study provided first insights into the impact of school closures on the mathematical performance in an online-learning environment, future studies are needed to illuminate the factors that contributed to the reported improvements in performance. Future investigations may benefit from taking into account variables pertaining to teacher’s usage of online-learning environments, especially the use of incentives. As discussed above, we cannot rule out that teachers incentivized students differently during the pandemic as compared to the year before. Furthermore, as teachers did not use the software in an actual classroom setting during the shutdown of schools, it is unclear whether teachers adopted more/less formative homework, or more/less optional practice. In addition, students who participated in e-learning exercises may be more likely to afford a smartphone, tablet, or laptop. Students without access to e-learning platforms, e.g., due to a lower socio-economic status, may have received degraded teaching content, thus leading to worse overall as opposed to better performance. Therefore, the current results do not warrant conclusions about the influence of school closures on students without access to digital equipment, and/or access to internet.

In conclusion, the results from this study suggest that the shutdown of schools in 2020 had a positive impact on the performance of students in an online learning environment for mathematics, relative to the year before. Most importantly, we found that these improvements were greatest for students who performed below average in 2019. While future research is needed to contrast these findings with academic performance in traditional learning environments, the results of this study may help inform educators in identifying appropriate learning methods for home schooling situations. One can speculate that the supplemental use of online learning software, next to traditional learning materials, may turn out to be an effective teaching method, especially for narrowing performance gaps between students, during and beyond the ongoing pandemic.

Supporting information

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255629.s001

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255629.s002

Acknowledgments

We thank Bettermarks for sharing their data with us.

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School educational models and child mental health among K-12 students: a scoping review

1 The International Peace Maternity & Child Health Hospital, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Embryo Original Diseases, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, No. 910 Hengshan Road, Shanghai, 200030 China

Yining Jiang

Xiangrong guo.

2 MOE-Shanghai Key Laboratory of Children’s Environmental Health, Department of Child and Adolescent Healthcare, Xinhua Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, 200092 China

Associated Data

The data analysed in this review are available from the corresponding author upon request.

The promotion of mental health among children and adolescents is a public health imperative worldwide, and schools have been proposed as the primary and targeted settings for mental health promotion for students in grades K-12. This review sought to provide a comprehensive understanding of key factors involved in models of school education contributing to student mental health development, interrelationships among these factors and the cross-cultural differences across nations and societies.

This scoping review followed the framework of Arksey and O’Malley and holistically reviewed the current evidence on the potential impacts of school-related factors or school-based interventions on student mental health in recent 5 years based on the PubMed, Web of Science, Embase and PsycExtra databases.

Results/findings

After screening 558 full-texts, this review contained a total of 197 original articles on school education and student mental health. Based on the five key factors (including curriculum, homework and tests, physical activities, interpersonal relationships and after-school activities) identified in student mental development according to thematic analyses, a multi-component school educational model integrating academic, social and physical factors was proposed so as to conceptualize the five school-based dimensions for K-12 students to promote student mental health development.

Conclusions

The lessons learned from previous studies indicate that developing multi-component school strategies to promote student mental health remains a major challenge. This review may help establish appropriate school educational models and call for a greater emphasis on advancement of student mental health in the K-12 school context among different nations or societies.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13034-022-00469-8.

Introduction

In recent years, mental health conditions among children and adolescents have received considerable attention as a public health concern. Globally about 10–20% of children and adolescents experience mental health problems [ 1 , 2 ], and mental health problems in early life may have the potential for long-term adverse consequences [ 3 , 4 ]. In 2019, the World Health Organization has pointed out that childhood and adolescence are critical periods for the acquisition of socio-emotional capabilities and for prevention of mental health problems [ 5 ]. A comprehensive multi-level solution to child mental health problems needs to be put forward for the sake of a healthier lifestyle and environment for future generations.

The school is a unique resource to help children improve their mental health. A few generations ago, schools’ priority was to teach the traditional subjects, such as reading, writing, and arithmetic. However, children are now spending a large amount of time at school where they learn, play and socialize. For some students, schools have a positive influence on their mental health. While for others, schools can present as a considerable source of stress, worry, and unhappiness, and hinder academic achievement [ 2 ]. According to Greenberg et al., today’s schools need to teach beyond basic skills (such as reading, writing, and counting skills) and enhance students’ social-emotional competence, characters, health, and civic engagement [ 6 ]. Therefore, universal mental health promotion in school settings is recognized to be particularly effective in improving students’ emotional well-being [ 2 , 7 ].

Research evidence over the last two decades has shown that schools can make a difference to students’ mental health [ 8 ]. Previous related systematic reviews or meta-analyses focused on the effects of a particular school-based intervention on child mental health [ 9 , 10 ] and answered a specific question with available research, however, reviews covering different school-related factors or school-based interventions are still lacking. An appropriate model of school education requires the combination of different school-related factors (such as curriculum, homework, and physical activities) and therefore needs to focus on multiple primary outcomes. Thus, we consider that a scoping review may be more appropriate to help us synthesize the recent evidence than a systematic review or meta-analysis, as the wide coverage and the heterogeneous nature of related literature focusing on multiple primary outcomes are not amenable to a more precise systematic review or meta-analysis [ 11 ]. To the best of our knowledge, this review is among the first to provide a comprehensive overview of available evidence on the potential impacts of multiple school-related factors or school-based interventions on student mental health, and identify school-related risk/protective factors involved in the development of mental health problems among K-12 students, and therefore, to help develop a holistic model of K-12 education.

A scoping review was systematically conducted following the methodological framework of Arksey and O'Malley [ 12 ]: defining the research question; identifying relevant studies; study selection; data extraction; and summarizing and reporting results. The protocol for this review was specified in advance and submitted for registration in the PROSPERO database (Reference number, CRD42019123126).

Defining the research question (stage 1)

For this review, we sought to answer the following questions:

• What is known from the existing literature on the potential impacts of school-related factors or school-based interventions on student mental health?
• What are the interrelationships among these factors involved in the school educational process?
• What are the cross-cultural differences in K-12 education process across nations and societies?

Identifying relevant studies (stage 2)

The search was conducted in PubMed, Web of Science and Embase electronic databases, and the dates of the published articles included in the search were limited to the last 5 years until 23 March 2021. The PsycExtra database was also searched to identify relevant evidence in the grey literature [ 13 ]. In recent 5 years, mental disorders among children and adolescents have increased at an alarming rate [ 14 , 15 ] and relevant policies calling for a greater role of schools in promoting student mental health have been issued in different countries [ 16 – 18 ], making educational settings at the forefront of the prevention initiative globally. Therefore, limiting research source published in the past 5 years was pre-defined since these publications reflected the newest discoveries, theories, processes, or practices. Search terms were selected based on the eligibility criteria and outcomes of interest were described as follows (Additional file 1 : Table S1). The search strategy was peer-reviewed by the librarian of Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine.

Study selection (stage 3)

T.Y. and Y.J. independently identified relevant articles by screening the titles, reviewing the abstracts and full-text articles. If any disagreement arises, the disagreement shall be resolved by discussion between the two reviewers and a third reviewer (J. X.).

Inclusion criteria were (1) according to the study designs: only randomized controlled trials (RCT)/quasi-RCT, longitudinal and cross-sectional studies; (2) according to the languages: articles only published in English or Chinese; (3) according to the ages of the subjects: preschoolers (3.5–5 years of age), children (6–11 years of age) and adolescents (12–18 years of age); and (4) according to the study topics: only articles examining the associations between factors involved in the school education and student mental health outcomes (psychological distress, such as depression, anxiety, stress, self-injury, suicide; and/or psychological well-being, such as self-esteem, self-concept, self-efficacy, optimism and happiness) in educational settings. Exclusion criteria: (1) Conference abstracts, case report/series, and descriptive articles were excluded due to overall quality and reliability. (2) Studies investigating problems potentially on a causal pathway to mental health disorders but without close associations with school education models (such as problems probably caused by family backgrounds) were excluded. (3) Studies using schools as the recruitment places but without school-related topics were also excluded.

Data extraction (stage 4)

T.Y. and Y.J., and X.G., Y. Z., H.H. extracted data from the included studies using a pre-defined extraction sheet. Researchers extracted the following information from each eligible study: study background (name of the first author, publication year, and study location), sample characteristics (number of participants, ages of participants, and sex proportion), design [intervention (RCT or quasi-RCT), or observational (cross-sectional or longitudinal) study], and instruments used to assess exposures in school settings and mental health outcomes. For intervention studies (RCTs and quasi-RCTs), we also extracted weeks of intervention, descriptions of the program, duration and frequency. T.Y. reviewed all the data extraction sheets under the supervision of J. X.

Summarizing and reporting the results (stage 5)

Results were summarized and reported using a narrative synthesis approach. Studies were sorted according to (a) factors/exposures associated with child and adolescent mental health in educational settings, and (b) components of school-based interventions to facilitate student mental health development. Key findings from the studies were then compared, contrasted and synthesized to illuminate themes which appeared across multiple investigations.

Search results and characteristics of the included articles

The search yielded 25,338 citations, from which 558 were screened in full-text. Finally, a total of 197 original articles were included in this scoping review: 72 RCTs (including individually randomized and cluster-randomized trials), 27 quasi-RCTs, 29 longitudinal studies and 69 cross-sectional studies (Fig.  1 for details). Based on thematic analyses, the included studies were analyzed and thematically grouped into five overarching categories based on the common themes in the types of intervention programs or exposures in the school context: curriculum, homework and tests, interpersonal relationships, physical activity and after-school activities. Table ​ Table1 1 provided a numerical summary of the characteristics of the included articles. The 197 articles included data from 46 countries in total, covering 24 European countries, 13 Asian countries, 4 American countries, 3 African countries, and 2 Oceanian countries. Most intervention studies were conducted in the United States of America (n = 16), followed by Australia (n = 11) and the United Kingdom (n = 11). Most observational studies were conducted in the United States of America (n = 19), followed by China (n = 15) and Canada (n = 8). Figure  2 illustrated the geographical distribution of the included studies. Further detailed descriptions of the intervention studies or observational studies were provided in Additional file 1 : Tables S2 and S3, respectively.

Study selection process

Summary of the included articles

Geographical distribution of included studies: A intervention studies; B observational studies

The association between school curriculum and student mental health was investigated in four cross-sectional studies. Mathematics performance was found to be adversely associated with levels of anxiety or negative emotional responses among primary school students [ 19 ]. However, in middle schools, difficulties and stressors students may encounter in learning academic lessons (such as difficulties/stressors in taking notes and understanding teachers’ instructions) could contribute to lowered self-esteem [ 20 ] and increased suicidal ideation or attempts [ 21 ]. Innovative integration of different courses instead of the traditional approach of teaching biology, chemistry, and physics separately, could improve students’ self-concept [ 22 ].

To promote student mental health, 64 intervention studies were involved in innovative curricula integrating different types of competencies, including social emotional learning (SEL), mindfulness-intervention, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)-based curriculum, life skills training, stress management curriculum, and so on (Fig.  3 ). Curricula focusing on SEL put an emphasis on the development of child social-emotional skills such as managing emotions, coping skills and empathy [ 23 ], and showed positive effects on depression, anxiety, stress, negative affect and emotional problems [ 23 – 37 ], especially in children with psychological symptoms [ 24 ] and girls [ 23 , 27 ], as well as increased prosocial behaviors [ 38 ], self-esteem [ 39 – 42 ] and positive affect [ 43 ]. However, four programs reported non-significant effects of SEL on student mental health outcomes [ 44 – 47 ], while two programs demonstrated increased levels of anxiety [ 48 ] and a reduction of subjective well-being [ 49 ] at post-intervention. Mindfulness-based curriculum showed its potential to endorse positive outcomes for youth including reduced emotional problems and negative affect [ 50 – 56 ] as well as increased well-being and positive emotions [ 51 , 52 , 57 – 60 ], especially among high-risk children with emotional problems or perceived stress before interventions [ 50 , 53 ]. However, non-significant effects were also reported in an Australian study in secondary schools [ 61 ]. Curricula based on CBT targeted children at risk or with early symptoms of mental illness [ 62 – 67 ], or all students regardless of symptom levels as a universal program [ 68 – 70 ], and could impose a positive effect on self-esteem, well-being, distress, stress and suicidality. However, a universal CBT trial in Swedish primary schools found no evidence of long-term effects of such program on anxiety prevention [ 71 ]. Five intervention studies based on life-skill-training were found to be effective in promoting self-efficacy [ 72 , 73 ], self-esteem [ 73 , 74 ], and reducing depression/anxiety-like symptoms [ 72 , 75 , 76 ]. Courses covering stress management skills have also been reported to improve life satisfaction, increase happiness and decrease anxiety levels among students in developing countries [ 77 – 79 ]. In practice, innovative teaching forms such as the game play [ 67 , 80 , 81 ] and outdoor learning [ 82 , 83 ] embedded in the traditional classes could help address the mental health and social participation concerns for children and youth. Limited evidence supported the mental health benefits of resilience-based curricula [ 84 – 86 ], which deserve further studies.

Harvest plots for overview of curriculum-based intervention studies, grouped by different types of curriculum-based interventions. The height of the bars corresponded to the sample sizes on a logarithmic scale of each study. Red bars represented positive effects of interventions on student mental health outcomes, grey bars represented non-significant effects on student mental health outcomes, and black bars represented negative effects on student mental health outcomes

Large cluster-randomized trials utilizing multi-component whole-school interventions which involves various aspects of school life (curriculum, interpersonal relationships, activities), such as the Strengthening Evidence base on scHool-based intErventions for pRomoting adolescent health (SEHER) program in India and the Together at School program in Finland, have been proved to be beneficial for prevention from depression [ 87 – 89 ] and psychological problems [ 90 ].

Homework and tests

The association between homework and psychological ill-being outcomes was investigated in four cross-sectional studies and one longitudinal study. Incomplete homework and longer homework durations were associated with a higher risk of anxiety symptoms [ 91 , 92 ], negative emotions [ 93 – 95 ] and even psychological distress in adulthood [ 96 ].

Innumerable exams during the educational process starting from primary schools may lead to increased anxiety and depression levels [ 97 , 98 ], particularly among senior students preparing for college entrance examinations [ 99 ]. Students with higher test scores had a lower probability to have emotional and behavioral problems [ 100 ], in comparison with students who failed examinations [ 93 , 101 ]. Depression and test anxiety were found to be highly correlated [ 102 ]. In terms of psychological well-being outcomes, findings were consistent in the negative associations between student test anxiety and self-esteem/life-satisfaction levels [ 103 , 104 ]. Regarding intervention studies, adolescent students at a high risk of test anxiety benefited from CBT or attention training by strengthening sense of control and meta-cognitive beliefs [ 105 , 106 ]. However, more knowledge about the criteria for an upcoming test was not related to anxiety levels during lessons [ 107 ].

Interpersonal relationships

School-based interpersonal (student–student or student–teacher) relationships are also important to student mental health. Low support from schoolmates/teachers and negative interpersonal events were reported to be associated with psychosomatic health complaints [ 108 – 113 ]. In contrast, positive interpersonal relationships in schools could promote emotional well-being [ 114 – 117 ] and reduce depressive symptoms in students [ 118 – 120 ].

Student–teacher relationships

Negative teaching behaviors were associated with negative affect [ 121 , 122 ] and low self-efficacy [ 123 ] among primary and high school students. Student–teacher conflicts at the beginning of the school year were associated with higher anxiety levels in students at the end of the year, and high-achieving girls were most susceptible to such negative associations [ 124 ]. Higher levels of perceived teachers’ support were correlated with decreased risks of depression [ 125 ], mental health problems [ 126 ] as well as increased positive affect [ 127 , 128 ] and improved mental well-being [ 129 , 130 ]. Better student–teacher relationships were positively associated with self-esteem/efficacy [ 131 ], while negatively associated with the risks of adolescents’ externalizing behaviors [ 132 ] among secondary school students. Longitudinal studies demonstrated that high intimacy levels between students and teachers were correlated with reduced emotional symptoms [ 133 ] and increased life-satisfaction among students [ 134 ]. In addition, more respect to teachers in 10th grade students was associated with higher self-efficacy and lower stress levels 1 year later [ 135 ].

A growing body of research focused on the issue of how to increase positive interactions between teachers and students in teaching practices. Actually, interventions on improving teaching skills to promote a positive classroom atmosphere could potentially benefit children, especially those experiencing a moderate to high level of risks of mental health problems [ 136 , 137 ].

Student–student relationships

Findings were consistent in considering the positive peer relationship as a protective factor against internalizing and externalizing behaviors [ 138 – 142 ], depression [ 143 – 145 ], anxiety [ 146 ], self-harm [ 147 ] and suicide [ 148 ], and as a favorable factor for positive affect [ 149 , 150 ], increased happiness [ 151 ], self-efficacy [ 152 ], optimism [ 153 , 154 ] and mental well-being [ 155 ]. In contrast, peer-hassles, friendlessness, negative peer-beliefs, peer-conflicts/isolation and peer-rejection, have been identified in the development of psychological distress among students [ 141 , 143 , 149 , 156 – 165 ].

As schools and classrooms are common settings to build peer relationships, student social skills to enhance the student–student relationship can be incorporated into school education. Training of interpersonal skills among secondary school students with depressive symptoms appeared to be effective in decreasing adolescent internalizing and externalizing symptoms [ 166 ]. In addition, recent studies also identified the effectiveness of small-group learning activities in the cognitive development and mental health promotion among students [ 87 – 90 , 167 ].

Physical activity in school

Moderate-to-high-intensity physical activity during school days has been confirmed to benefit children and adolescents in relation to various psychosocial outcomes, such as reduced symptoms of depression [ 168 ], emotional problems [ 169 ] and mental distress [ 170 ] as well as improved self-efficacy [ 171 ] and mental well-being [ 172 , 173 ]. In addition, participation in physical education (PE) at least twice a week was significantly associated with a lower likelihood of suicidal ideation and stress [ 174 ].

A variety of school‐based physical activity interventions or lessons have been proposed in previous studies to promote physical activity levels and psychosocial fitness in students, including integrating physical activities into classroom settings [ 175 – 178 ], assigning physical activity homework [ 178 ], physically-active academic lessons [ 179 , 180 ] as well as an obligation of ensuring the participation of various kinds of sports (such as aerobic exercises, resistance exercises, yoga) in PE lessons [ 181 – 192 ]. Although the effectiveness of these proposed physical activity interventions was not consistent, physical education is suggested to implement sustainably as other academic courses with special attention.

After-school activities

Several cross-sectional studies have synthesized evidence on the positive effects of leisure-time physical activity against student depression, anxiety, stress, and psychological distress [ 193 – 199 ]. Extracurricular sport participation (such as sports, dance, and martial arts) could foster perceived self-efficacy, self-esteem, improve mental health status [ 200 – 203 ], and reduce emotional problems [ 204 ] and depressive symptoms [ 205 ]. Participation in team sports was more strongly related to beneficial mental health outcomes than individual sports, especially in high school girls [ 199 ]. Other forms of organized activities, such as youth organizations and arts, have also been demonstrated to benefit self-esteem [ 201 ], self-worth [ 206 ], satisfaction with life and optimism [ 207 , 208 ].

However, different types of after-school activities may result in different impacts on student mental health. Previous studies demonstrated that students participating in after-school programs of yoga or sports had better well-being and self-efficacy [ 209 ], and decreased levels of anxiety [ 210 ] and negative mood [ 211 ], while another study showed that the after-school yoga program induced no significant changes in levels of depression, anxiety and stress among students [ 212 ]. Inconsistent findings on the effects of participation in art activities on student mental health were also reported [ 213 , 214 ]. Another study also highlighted the benefits of after-school clubs, demonstrating an improvement in socio-emotional competencies and emotional status, and sustained effects at 12-month follow-up [ 215 ].

Based on the potential importance of the five school-based factors identified in student mental development, a multi-component school educational model is therefore proposed to conceptualize the five school-based dimensions (including curriculum, homework and tests, interpersonal relationships, physical activity, and after-school activities) for K-12 students to promote their mental health (Fig.  4 ). The interrelationships among the five dimensions and cross-cultural comparisons are further discussed as follows in a holistic way.

The multi-component school educational model is proposed to conceptualize the five school-based dimensions (including curriculum set, homework and tests, physical activity, interpersonal relationships and after-school activities) for K-12 students to promote student mental health

Comprehensive understanding of K-12 school educational models: the reciprocal relationships among factors

Students’ experiences in the school educational context are dynamic processes which englobe a variety of educational elements (such as curriculum, homework, tests) and social elements (such as interpersonal relationships and social activities in schools). Based on the educational model proposed in this review, these educational/social elements are closely related and interact with each other, which play an important role in students’ psychosocial development.

Being aware of this, initiatives aimed to improve student social and emotional competencies may certainly impact student psychological well-being, at least in part, in a way of developing supportive relationships between teachers-students or between peers [ 35 , 89 ]. On the other hand, the enhancement of interpersonal relationships at school could serve as a potent source of motivation for student academic progress so as to further promote psychological well-being [ 131 , 132 ]. In addition, school education reforms intended to provide pupils with more varied teaching and learning practices to promote supportive interpersonal relationships between students and teachers or between peers, such as education programs outside the classroom [ 82 ], cooperative learning [ 167 ] and adaptive classroom management [ 136 , 137 ], have also been advocated among nations recently.

Our findings also suggested that participation in non-academic activities was an important component of positive youth development. Actually, these school-based activities in different contexts also require teacher–student interactions or peer interactions. Social aspects of physical activities have been proposed to strengthen relationship-building and other interpersonal skills that may additionally protect students against the development of mental health problems [ 130 , 203 ]. Among various types of sports, team sports seemed to be associated with more beneficial outcomes compared with individual sports due to the social aspect of being part of a team [ 194 , 199 ]. Participation in music, student council, and other clubs/organizations may also provide students with frequent connections with peers, and opportunities to build relationships with others that share similar interests [ 201 ]. Further, frequent and supportive interactions with teachers and peers in sports and clubs may promote student positive views of the self and encourage their health-promoting behaviors (such as physical activities).

However, due to increasing academic pressure, children have to spend a large amount of time on academic studies, and inevitably displace time on sleep, leisure, exercises/sports, and extracurricular activities [ 92 ]. Although the right amount of homework may improve school achievements [ 216 ] and higher test scores may help prevent students from mental distress [ 100 – 102 ], over-emphasis on academic achivements may lead to elevated stress levels and poor health outcomes ultimately. The anxiety specifically related to academic achievement and test-taking at school was frequently reported among students who felt pressured and overwhelmed by the continuous evaluation of their academic performance [ 98 , 103 , 104 ]. In such high-pressure academic environments, strategies to alleviate the levels of stress among students should be incorporated into intervention efforts, such as stress management skill training [ 77 – 79 ], CBT-based curriculum [ 62 , 64 , 66 , 105 ], and attention training [ 106 ]. Therefore, school supportive policies that allow students continued access to various non-academic activities as well as improve their social aspect of participation may be one fruitful avenue to promote student well-being.

Cross-cultural differences in K-12 educational models among different nations and societies

As we reviewed above, heavy academic burden exists as an important school-related stressor for students [ 91 , 92 , 94 – 96 ], probably due to excessive examinations [ 97 – 99 ] and unsatisfactory academic performance [ 100 – 102 ]. Actually, extrinsic cultural factors significantly impact upon student academic burden. In most countries, college admission policies affect the entire ecological system of K-12 education, because success in life or careers is determined by examination performance to a large extent [ 217 ]. The impacts of heavy academic burden may be greatest in Asian cultures where more after-school time of students is spent on homework, exam preparations, and extracurricular classes for academic improvement (such as in Korea, Japan, China and Singapore) [ 92 , 95 , 218 ]. As a consequence, the high proportion of adolescents fall in the “academic burnout group” in Asian countries [ 219 ], which highlights the need to take further measures to combat the issue. As an issue of concern, the “double reduction” policy has been implemented nationwide in China since 2021, being aimed to relieve students of excessive study burden, and the effects of the policy are anticipated but remain unknown up to now.

Other factors such as school curriculum and extra-curricular commitments, vary among societies and nations and may explain the cross-cultural differences in educational models [ 220 ]. For example, in Finland, the primary science subject is as important as mathematics or reading, while Chinese schools often lack time to arrange a sufficient number of science courses [ 221 ], which could be explained by different educational traditions of the two countries. In addition, approximately 75% of high schools in Korea failed to implement national curriculum guidelines for physical education (150 min/week), instead replacing that time with self-guided study to prepare for university admission exams [ 174 ]. In terms of the arrangement of the after-school time, Asian students spend most of their after-school time on private tutoring or doing homework [ 222 ], 2–3 times longer than the time spent by adolescents in most western countries/cities [ 92 ]. However, according to our analyses and summaries, most intervention studies targeting the improvement of mental health of students by school education were conducted in western countries (Fig.  2 ), suggesting that special attention needs to be paid to the students’ mental health issue on campus, especially in countries where students have heavy study-loads. Merits of the different educational traditions also need to be considered in the designs of educational models among different countries.

Strengths and limitations

This study focuses on an interdisciplinary topic covering the fields of developmental behavioral pediatrics and education, and the establishment of appropriate school educational models is teamwork involving multiple disciplines including pediatrics, prevention, education, services and policy. Although there are lots of studies focusing on a particular factor in school educational processes to promote student mental health, comprehensive analysis/understanding on multi-component educational model is lacking, which is important and urgently needed for the development of multi-dimensional educational models/strategies. Therefore, we included a wide range of related studies, summarized a comprehensive understanding of the evidence base, and discussed the interrelationships among the components/factors of school educational models and the cross-cultural gaps in K-12 education across different societies, which may have significant implications for future policy-making.

Some limitations also exist and are worth noting. First, this review used the method of the scoping review which adopted a descriptive approach, rather than the meta-analysis or systematic review which provided a rigorous method of synthesizing the literature. Under the subject (appropriate school education model among K-12 students) of this scoping review, multiple related topics (including curriculum, homework and tests, physical activities, interpersonal relationships and after-school activities) were included rather than one specific topic. Therefore, we consider that the method of the scoping-review is appropriate, given that the aim of this review is to chart or map the available literature on a given subject rather than answering a specific question by providing effect sizes across multiple studies. Second, we limited the study search within recent 5 years. Although we consider that the fields involved in this scoping review change quickly with the acquisition of new knowledge/information in recent 5 years, limiting the literature search within recent 5 years may make us miss some related but relatively old literature. Third, we only included studies disseminated in English or Chinese, which may limit the generalizability of our results to other non-English/Chinese speaking countries.

This scoping review has revealed that the K-12 schools are unique settings where almost all the children and adolescents can be reached, and through which existing educational components (such as curriculum, homework and tests, physical activities, interpersonal relationships and after-school activities) can be leveraged and integrated to form a holistic model of school education, and therefore to promote student mental health. In future, the school may be considered as an ideal setting to implement school-based mental health interventions. Our review suggests the need of comprehensive multi-component educational model, which involves academic, social and physical factors, to be established to improve student academic achievement and simultaneously maintain their mental health.

However, questions still remain as to what is optimal integration of various educational components to form the best model of school education, and how to promote the wide application of the appropriate school educational model. Individual differences among students/schools and cross-cultural differences may need to be considered in the model design process.

Acknowledgements

We thank the librarian of Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine for their help.

Abbreviations

Author contributions.

JX conceived the scoping review, supervised the review process and reviewed the manuscript. TY conducted study selection and data extraction, charted, synthesized the data, and drafted the manuscript. YJ conducted study selection and data extraction. XG, YZ and HH conducted data extraction. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, 81974486, 81673189) (to Jian Xu), Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine Gaofeng Clinical Medicine Grant Support (20172016) (to Jian Xu), Shanghai Sailing Program (21YF1451500) (to Hui Hua).

Availability of data and materials

Declarations.

Not applicable.

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest that could be perceived as prejudicing the impartiality of the research reported.

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Researchers: PIANDO, VERONICA . BALANA, KYLA JOYCE . RITO, KARLA. MAGALONA, BEATRISHA. ALAMIL, CHRISTIAN This research approach will measure the overall effectiveness of the implication of the implementation of the K-12 Curriculum to the Grade 10 students of Divine Word College of Legazpi. It covers how the implementation of K-12 curriculum affects the Grade 10 students of DWCL. Moreover, this study also tackles the advantages and disadvantages of implementing the K-12 Curriculum to the Grade 10 students of DWCL.Specifically; this sought to answer the following questions which are under the statement of the problem 1. What is the extent of the implementation of the K-12 curriculum? 2. What are the problems encountered by the persons who benefited the implementation of the K-12 curriculum? 3. What are the recommendations to the problems encountered? The researchers made use of Quantitative analysis: surveys and questionnaires in order to have a primary source of data. Some of the research devices were also used by the researchers such as books, encyclopedias, magazines, thesis as well as internet for additional information. We are interested to know how the implementation of the K-12 curriculum affects the students especially the grade 10 students. We also want to know the advantages and disadvantages that the K-12 curriculum can give and for us to know if the implementation of the K-12 curriculum by the DepEd is successful as of now The survey questionnaire was divided into three parts ; First, the extent of the implementation of the K-12 curriculum. Second, the problems encountered by the persons who benefited the implementation of the K-12 curriculum. Third, the recommendations to the problems encountered. Through the data gathered from the survey questionnaire , the following conclusion was formulated, 1.) The students that are involved in the study said that the implementation of the K12 program that it is a must, because the primary objective of the program is to improve the quality of education so that, when the students finished the basic education they will be more productive. 2.) The K-12 Program will not only help the students but also our country in terms of Education. 3.) the most important contribution of the program to the students is to improve their abilities, and revolutionized the Philippines in terms of educational attainment. In line with this conclusion, the researchers recommend the following: To Future researchers - looking for better and easiest ways of doing your research papers could have greatly improved your findings. Gathering information could be taken from various sources such as books, encyclopedias, other thesis, and internet. To People - primary and secondary sources could probably give you a big help in order to develop your research papers. Acknowledge the importance of your topics to emphasize the connection of your findings. To Groups - in performing your research papers, communication and cooperation is needed to provide the different information that comes in your group.

Tarhata S . Guiamalon

The implementation of the K-12 Senior High School program makes Filipino students competitive globally. On this premise, a study to assess the K-12 Senior High School program of Laboratory High School (LHS) of Cotabato City State Polytechnic College (CCSPC). Also, it explored the resources, teachers&#39; instructional practices, the attainment of the objectives of the program, and the challenges encountered in the implementation. It employed descriptive-evaluative design. It administered survey questionnaires to 202 total number of respondents composed of 169 senior high school students who were chosen randomly and 30 teachers, including three staff, who were selected using Complete Total Enumeration. It was conducted last school year 2019-2020. Results revealed that services and resources evidently provided. The teachers of the LHS have evidently practiced the instructional practices in terms of teaching strategies, classroom management, and assessment of learning. Considering the ...

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Effectiveness of Implementation of K To 12 Program at Bestlink College of the Philippines: An Emerging Guide

• Janine Pestilos
• Marites Antofina
• Hazelyn Cruz
• Jojielyn Rubas
• Justine Joie Cruz
• Dr. Milagros Luang

The effectiveness of a curriculum, which produces good results that benefit each individual and every denomination, dictates the future of a student. Time flies, and generation changes, which considerably affect people. Many institutions passed through modification because of the alterations of needs. Education also changes. New techniques and instructions are needed for the success of the students. To understand the effectiveness of new education, appropriateness must be based on the quality of the students, which must produce new skills and knowledge and be able to prepare the students for higher education and the job market. The descriptive method was used in this study because it attempts to describe the existence of implementation through 10 graduate students and 10 senior high school teachers in Bestlink College of the Philippines, Bulacan Campus. To gather data, the instrument used was a survey wherein the respondents were instructed to check the appropriate given information about K-12. The researchers used statistical treatment to interpret and analyze the results of the gathered data. The results showed that the teachers and students have different perceptions about the implementation of the program. The K-12 program is effective in different perceptions of respondents. Based on the findings of this study, the researchers concluded that the respondents have different perceptions about the implementation of the program. Based on the investigation, the researchers recommended that the students and teachers must have consistent feedback about the objectives and reasons of the program. The benefits must be earned by the students, and teachers should make activities that will help the students to engage more in the new curriculum. However, to effectively gain remarkable effects of these changes, we must begin to accept and give a chance to incorporate the ideal of students throughout the curriculum process.

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New advances in technology are upending education, from the recent debut of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT to the growing accessibility of virtual-reality tools that expand the boundaries of the classroom. For educators, at the heart of it all is the hope that every learner gets an equal chance to develop the skills they need to succeed. But that promise is not without its pitfalls.

“Technology is a game-changer for education – it offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), who is also a professor of educational technology at the GSE and faculty director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

For K-12 schools, this year also marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, which has provided pandemic recovery funds that many districts used to invest in educational software and systems. With these funds running out in September 2024, schools are trying to determine their best use of technology as they face the prospect of diminishing resources.

Here, Schwartz and other Stanford education scholars weigh in on some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom this year.

AI in the classroom

In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately worried that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or coach students during the writing process.

AI can also help automate tasks like grading and lesson planning, freeing teachers to do the human work that drew them into the profession in the first place, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty lead for the AI + Education initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “I’m heartened to see some movement toward creating AI tools that make teachers’ lives better – not to replace them, but to give them the time to do the work that only teachers are able to do,” he said. “I hope to see more on that front.”

He also emphasized the need to teach students now to begin questioning and critiquing the development and use of AI. “AI is not going away,” said Lee, who is also director of CRAFT (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), which provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students across subject areas. “We need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology.”

Immersive environments

The use of immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality is also expected to surge in the classroom, especially as new high-profile devices integrating these realities hit the marketplace in 2024.

The educational possibilities now go beyond putting on a headset and experiencing life in a distant location. With new technologies, students can create their own local interactive 360-degree scenarios, using just a cell phone or inexpensive camera and simple online tools.

“This is an area that’s really going to explode over the next couple of years,” said Kristen Pilner Blair, director of research for the Digital Learning initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which runs a program exploring the use of virtual field trips to promote learning. “Students can learn about the effects of climate change, say, by virtually experiencing the impact on a particular environment. But they can also become creators, documenting and sharing immersive media that shows the effects where they live.”

Integrating AI into virtual simulations could also soon take the experience to another level, Schwartz said. “If your VR experience brings me to a redwood tree, you could have a window pop up that allows me to ask questions about the tree, and AI can deliver the answers.”

Gamification

Another trend expected to intensify this year is the gamification of learning activities, often featuring dynamic videos with interactive elements to engage and hold students’ attention.

“Gamification is a good motivator, because one key aspect is reward, which is very powerful,” said Schwartz. The downside? Rewards are specific to the activity at hand, which may not extend to learning more generally. “If I get rewarded for doing math in a space-age video game, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be motivated to do math anywhere else.”

Gamification sometimes tries to make “chocolate-covered broccoli,” Schwartz said, by adding art and rewards to make speeded response tasks involving single-answer, factual questions more fun. He hopes to see more creative play patterns that give students points for rethinking an approach or adapting their strategy, rather than only rewarding them for quickly producing a correct response.

Data-gathering and analysis

The growing use of technology in schools is producing massive amounts of data on students’ activities in the classroom and online. “We’re now able to capture moment-to-moment data, every keystroke a kid makes,” said Schwartz – data that can reveal areas of struggle and different learning opportunities, from solving a math problem to approaching a writing assignment.

But outside of research settings, he said, that type of granular data – now owned by tech companies – is more likely used to refine the design of the software than to provide teachers with actionable information.

The promise of personalized learning is being able to generate content aligned with students’ interests and skill levels, and making lessons more accessible for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Realizing that promise requires that educators can make sense of the data that’s being collected, said Schwartz – and while advances in AI are making it easier to identify patterns and findings, the data also needs to be in a system and form educators can access and analyze for decision-making. Developing a usable infrastructure for that data, Schwartz said, is an important next step.

With the accumulation of student data comes privacy concerns: How is the data being collected? Are there regulations or guidelines around its use in decision-making? What steps are being taken to prevent unauthorized access? In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data.

Technology is “requiring people to check their assumptions about education,” said Schwartz, noting that AI in particular is very efficient at replicating biases and automating the way things have been done in the past, including poor models of instruction. “But it’s also opening up new possibilities for students producing material, and for being able to identify children who are not average so we can customize toward them. It’s an opportunity to think of entirely new ways of teaching – this is the path I hope to see.”

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A quarter of U.S. teachers say AI tools do more harm than good in K-12 education

As some teachers start to use artificial intelligence (AI) tools in their work, a majority are uncertain about or see downsides to the general use of AI tools in K-12 education, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in fall 2023.  

A quarter of public K-12 teachers say using AI tools in K-12 education does more harm than good. About a third (32%) say there is about an equal mix of benefit and harm, while only 6% say it does more good than harm. Another 35% say they aren’t sure.

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to better understand public K-12 teachers’ views on the use of artificial intelligence tools in K-12 education. To do this, we surveyed 2,531 U.S. public K-12 teachers from Oct. 17 to Nov. 14, 2023. The teachers are members of RAND’s American Teacher Panel, a nationally representative panel of public school K-12 teachers recruited through MDR Education. Survey data is weighted to state and national teacher characteristics to ensure they are representative of the target population.

We also used data from a separate survey of 1,453 U.S. teens conducted from Sept. 26 to Oct. 23, 2023. Ipsos recruited the teens via their parents, who were part of its KnowledgePanel . The survey was weighted to be representative of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 who live with their parents by age, gender, race and ethnicity, household income, and other categories.

The survey on teens was reviewed and approved by an external institutional review board (IRB), Advarra, an independent committee of experts specializing in helping to protect the rights of research participants. Find more details about the survey of teens here .

Here are the questions we asked teachers and teens , along with responses, and the methodology for the survey of teachers and for the survey of teens .

How teachers’ views differ by school level

High school teachers are more likely than elementary and middle school teachers to hold negative views about AI tools in education.

About a third of high school teachers (35%) say these tools do more harm than good. Roughly a quarter of middle school teachers (24%) and 19% of elementary school teachers say the same.

Fewer than one-in-ten teachers at all levels say these tools do more good than harm.

Some 47% of elementary school teachers say they aren’t sure about the impact of AI tools in K-12 education. That is much larger than the shares of middle and high school teachers who say this.

Teens’ experiences with and views of ChatGPT

In a separate survey, we asked U.S. teens about their experience with and views of ChatGPT , a generative AI tool, in their schoolwork.

Among teens who have heard of ChatGPT, 19% say they have used it to help them with schoolwork. This is more common among teens in higher grades. About a quarter of 11th and 12th graders who have heard of ChatGPT (24%) say they have used it in their schoolwork, compared with 17% of 9th and 10th graders and 12% of 7th and 8th graders.

Teens’ views on whether using ChatGPT is acceptable depend on what it’s being used for. Among teens who have heard of ChatGPT:

• 69% say it’s acceptable to use it to research new topics.
• 39% say it’s acceptable to use it to solve math problems.
• 20% say it’s acceptable to use it to write essays.

Shares ranging from 18% to 24% aren’t sure whether it is acceptable to use ChatGPT in each of these situations.

Overall, two-thirds of U.S. teens say they have heard of ChatGPT. That includes 23% who have heard a lot about it and 44% who have heard a little about it. Roughly a third (32%) say they have heard nothing at all about ChatGPT.

Note: Here are the questions we asked teachers and teens , along with responses, and the methodology for the survey of teachers and for the survey of teens .

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Luona Lin is a research associate focusing on social and demographic research at Pew Research Center .

Most Americans think U.S. K-12 STEM education isn’t above average, but test results paint a mixed picture

About 1 in 4 u.s. teachers say their school went into a gun-related lockdown in the last school year, about half of americans say public k-12 education is going in the wrong direction, what public k-12 teachers want americans to know about teaching, what’s it like to be a teacher in america today, most popular.

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ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of  The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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How MIT Professor Joshua Bennett is addressing gaps in K-12 literary arts education

In this video interview, the j-wel education innovation grantee discusses a project that combines archival research with collaborative art making..

By Maria Segala

Through its Education Innovation Grants, the MIT Jameel World Education Lab aspires to develop the building blocks, ideas, and connections that power global transformation in learning. Jameel World Education Lab grants support educational innovations across a rich variety of fields including: linguistics, mechanical engineering, literature, architecture, physics, management, political science, and more. More than $5 million in funding has been awarded to MIT researchers since 2017.

As part of an ongoing series, we are taking a closer look at each 2023 grantee’s projects. In the spotlight today is Joshua Bennett , Distinguished Chair of the Humanities and professor in the Literature department. Bennett’s project, “Minor notes: teaching the archival arts,” aims to address existing gaps in K-12 literary arts education through a novel approach that combines archival research with collaborative art making. Over the past year, Bennett has met with a cohort of high school seniors and their faculty advisors to explore local community archives and compose original works of art inspired by the historical materials they discover in those spaces.

In the following videos, Bennett discusses what excites him most about this project, his hopes for what the students involved will take away from the experience, and what success looks like.

What excites you most about your project?

“I’m learning a lot more about what it means to be a young person in our historical moment, the kind of pressures young people face, but also why some of them are interested in making art and studying history at this point in time.”

What do you hope is the biggest takeaway from your project for the students and for yourself?

“This would be a very different program if it provided individual funding for individual students. Instead…what we’ve decided is that we are an ensemble. We are here to push each other even though we have different disciplines and practices and interests. And we’re here to give open and honest feedback…to lift the work to a transcendent level…That has been incredible to experience as a group.”

What does success look like for your project, and how are you measuring success?

“I hope this becomes a kind of national model…if you have a local university and a high school, you can do this. You can go into a community archive…and make the argument that the kind of art we’re committed to is not just about our emotions or mental state…but it’s about how our emotions and mental states are informed by history, and how we can reach back into our shared past to build and safeguard the future world.”

Interested in learning more about grants from Jameel World Education Lab at MIT Open Learning? Visit the lab’s grants website .

How MIT Professor Joshua Bennett is addressing gaps in K-12 literary arts education was originally published in MIT Open Learning on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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Expanding publicly funded pre-K: How to do it and do it well

Preschool enrollment fell across the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the nation’s lowest-income families experiencing the most precipitous drop. 1 Allison H. Friedman-Krauss et al., The state of preschool 2021 , National Institute for Early Education Research, 2022. And among school-age children, historically disadvantaged students saw achievement gaps widen even further. 2 Emma Dorn, Bryan Hancock, Jimmy Sarakatsannis, and Ellen Viruleg, “ COVID-19 and education: The lingering effects of unfinished learning ,” McKinsey, July 27, 2021.

This disruption to children’s schooling, including prekindergarten (pre-K) for children ages three through five, was a major contributor to the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on women, children, and low-income households. 3 Margaret Douglas et al., “Mitigating the wider health effects of covid-19 pandemic response,” BMJ , 2020, Volume 369. While the return to the classroom marked a return to stability for many families, the economic, health, and social challenges that disproportionately affected low-income households, women, and historically marginalized communities still exist. 4 Dan Levin, “How the pandemic has been devastating for children from low-income families,” New York Times , updated January 2, 2021. States now have an opportunity to strengthen the foundation that supports families, particularly those in poverty, by implementing best-in-class pre-K educational programs.

The potential benefits of public pre-K

Public prekindergarten (pre-K) can close as much as 50 percent of the racial achievement gap if children attend a high-quality program. 1 Gregory Camilli et al., “Meta-analysis of the effects of early education interventions on cognitive and social development,” Teachers College Record , 2010, Volume 112, Number 3. Consider that in New York City, the first cohort of students to attend universal preschool saw a significantly reduced racial achievement gap in standardized test scores in third grade in 2019. For more, see Leslie Brody, “NYC reading-test scores suggest free preschool’s potential benefits,” Wall Street Journal , August 22, 2019. In this way and many others, all of society stands to benefit from publicly funded pre-K programs.

Children benefit. Children enrolled in pre-K have higher test scores, better language development, and better motor skills than those who do not. 2 Ted Gayer and William T. Gormley Jr., “Promoting school readiness in Oklahoma: An evaluation of Tulsa’s pre-K program,” Journal of Human Resources , 2005, Volume 40, Number 3. They also often have better attendance and fewer behavioral problems in school. 3 Linda Darling-Hammond, Madelyn Gardner, and Beth Meloy, Untangling the evidence on preschool effectiveness: Insights for policymakers , Learning Policy Institute, January 2019. A study of the Abbott preschool program in New Jersey found that academic advantages for pre-K participants persisted through high school. 4 W. Steven Barnett and Kwanghee Jung, “Effects of New Jersey’s Abbott preschool program on children’s achievement, grade retention, and special education through tenth grade,” Early Childhood Research Quarterly , Volume 56, 2021. A study of Boston’s pre-K program found that it led to higher high school graduation rates, and students who attended pre-K were also more likely to take the SAT and enroll in college. 5 Guthrie Gray-Lobe, Parag A. Pathak, and Christopher R. Walters, The long-term effects of universal preschool in Boston , National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper, NBER Working Paper Series, number 28756, May 2021. Later in life, children who attended high-quality pre-K programs have higher earnings as adults and are less likely to need public assistance or be imprisoned. 6 Steve Suitts et al., The promise of Georgia pre-K: Building life-long education, current budget savings and long-term economic growth in hard times , Southern Education Foundation, 2011.

Parents benefit. A randomized study of the universal pre-K program in Washington, DC, found a ten-percentage-point increase in maternal labor force participation. 7 Elias Ilin, Samantha Shampine, and Ellie Terry, Does access to free pre-kindergarten increase maternal labor supply? , Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City working paper, RWP 21-11, November 2021; Rasheed Malik, The effects of universal preschool in Washington, D.C.: Children’s learning and mothers’ earnings , Center for American Progress, September 2018. Free or affordable early childhood education may enable greater workforce participation by parents in many cities and states, which could reverse the trends toward reduced labor force participation seen over the past several years. Many such trends are described in detail in McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace series. 8 Women in the Workplace 2022 , McKinsey and LeanIn.org, October 18, 2022.

Economies benefit. As state economies continue to recover from COVID-19, business leaders may be invested in building strong early childhood programs; in fact, several cities and states have seen large employers push adequate and affordable pre-K options for their employees. 9 San Antonio is one example of a city that brought business leaders to the table when designing its pre-K initiative. Erick Trickey, “How Julián Castro bet on 4-year-olds to transform San Antonio,” Politico Magazine , August 17, 2017. And while estimates of governments’ ROI for preschool vary, they are invariably positive: one attempt to standardize ROI calculations across pre-K research studies found a benefit of between $2 and $16 for every dollar invested. 10 ROI varied depending on program quality and when impact was assessed. Lynn A. Karoly, Toward standardization of benefit-cost analyses of early childhood interventions , RAND working paper, RAND Labor and Population working paper series, WR-823, December 2010. Long-term evaluations, like the Perry Preschool and Chicago Child-Parent Center (CPC) initiatives, show increasing benefits over time, suggesting that some more recent studies may understate the long-term benefits of high-quality pre-K to adult outcomes. 11 Shirley Adelstein, Timothy J. Bartik, and William Gormley, “Earnings benefits of Tulsa’s pre-K program for different income groups,” Economics of Education Review , December 2012, Volume 31, Number 6.

These benefits are widely recognized, and there is broad support for public pre-K spending in the United States. Polling has found that most Americans, regardless of their political affiliation, believe that public policies should be designed to help families afford early care and learning. 12 Karl Agne, John Halpin, and Margie Omero, Affordable child care and early learning for all families , Center for American Progress, September 2018. Universal pre-K has been championed by leaders across the political spectrum: Oklahoma, Vermont, and West Virginia were among the first states to invest in a universal program, and there are now at least seven states with universal programs, as well as others on the pathway toward one. 13 Allison H. Friedman-Krauss et al., The state of preschool 2021 , National Institute for Early Education Research, 2022.

The benefits of a high-quality early childhood education are supported by rigorous research and can touch many corners of society. Quality pre-K education programs help children from all backgrounds, with proven long-term benefits in academic, mental-health, and social outcomes. For children from historically disadvantaged communities, pre-K can help break the cycle of poverty (see sidebar “The potential benefits of public pre-K”). 5 Henry M. Levin et al., The costs and benefits of an excellent education for all of America’s children , Teachers College, Columbia University working paper, 2006. But how state and local governments invest in pre-K education matters tremendously. Recent studies have found that investments that fail to focus on program quality can backfire and negatively affect students’ long-term achievement. 6 Kelley Durkin et al., “Effects of a statewide pre-kindergarten program on children’s achievement and behavior through sixth grade,” Developmental Psychology , March 2022, Volume 58, Number 3. High-quality programs, by contrast, can produce pre-K graduates who have stronger educational outcomes through high school and into adulthood. 7 Guthrie Gray-Lobe, Parag A. Pathak, and Christopher R. Walters, The long-term effects of universal preschool in Boston , National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper, NBER Working Paper Series, number 28756, May 2021.

To ensure best-in-class, cost-effective pre-K programs, state and local leaders can assess the needs of their population and their available budget and then take lessons from districts that have implemented these programs successfully. To help with those efforts, we have identified eight elements that have yielded pre-K programs that have delivered positive impacts for students and taxpayers. Drawn from research and the experiences of dozens of jurisdictions, these elements prioritize lessons from states and municipalities with programs that have resulted in positive outcomes for children from kindergarten to 12th grade. We also explore six major decisions that states typically make regarding program design, the trade-offs those decisions could entail, 8 We examine where different high-quality public programs have made different design decisions based on their specific context. and the cost considerations for standing up a high-quality program. For states that decide to invest in pre-K, this could provide a road map for how to design a program that will be both high quality and cost-effective.

Research-backed, parent-approved: The elements of a high-quality pre-K program

Large-scale, publicly funded pre-K programs exist in many states and large cities across the country, and many have been rigorously studied. Across the research, the evidence is clear: one of the single greatest drivers of child outcomes, both academically and behaviorally, is high-quality interactions between teachers and students. 9 Marigen Narea et al., “Understanding the relationship between preschool teachers’ well-being, interaction quality and students’ well-being,” Child Indicators Research , 2022, Volume 15; Andrew J. Mashburn et al., “Measures of classroom quality in prekindergarten and children’s development of academic, language, and social skills,” Child Development , May 2008, Volume 79, Number 3.

States can make intentional design choices that could enable the kinds of high-quality teacher–student interactions that lead to positive outcomes. This often requires clear decisions and investment up front and sustained attention from stakeholders all along the delivery chain. Across successful programs, we’ve identified eight specific variables that support high-quality instruction and interactions in early childhood education. Each of the eight variables involve providing the necessary time, space, and support for teachers and students to learn and develop meaningful connections. 10 These eight elements overlap considerably with the ten benchmarks for public pre-K programs provided by the National Institute for Early Education Research, as well as the Learning Policy Institute’s recommended initiatives for effective pre-K. This growing alignment in the field can support policy makers as they prioritize where to make investments. For more, see The state of preschool 2021 , 2022; and Linda Darling-Hammond, Madelyn Gardner, and Beth Meloy, Untangling the evidence on preschool effectiveness: Insights for policymakers , Learning Policy Institute, January 2019.

Sufficient time in the classroom

Studies show that full-day pre-K programs lead to better student outcomes than half-day programs. 11 One recent study in Colorado found that full-day pre-K had substantial positive effects on children’s vocabulary and basic literacy skills when compared with half-day pre-K. For more, see Allison Atteberry, Daphna Bassok, and Vivian C. Wong, “The effects of full-day pre-kindergarten: Experimental evidence of impacts on children’s school readiness,” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis , 2019, Volume 41, Number 4. Research also found that full-day Head Start programs boosted cognitive skill development more than half-day programs. For more, see Christopher R. Walters, “Inputs in the production of early childhood human capital: Evidence from Head Start,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics , October 2015, Volume 7, Number 4. And parents report higher satisfaction with full-day programs because they make it easier to accommodate work and other responsibilities. 12 Yves Herry, Claire Maltais, and Katherine Thompson, “Effects of a full-day preschool program on 4-year-old children,” Early Childhood Research & Practice , 2007, Volume 9, Number 2.

Opinions vary over whether “full day” pre-K—typically about six hours—is sufficient for a full-time working parent; some systems supplement with paid aftercare or other options for working families to extend the day. 13 Louis Freedberg and Susan Frey, “Expanding early learning time: Accessing full-day preschool and kindergarten in California,” EdSource, March 2017.

Low teacher-to-child ratio

Small class sizes are easier to manage, allowing for more individualized instruction and improved safety and supervision. For this reason, high-quality programs typically limit their teacher-to-child ratio to 1:10, with a maximum of 20 children in a classroom with two adults, typically including a lead teacher and an assistant teacher. 14 The state of preschool 2021 , 2022. Interestingly, the research benefits of even smaller class sizes are not significant enough to necessarily merit the costs. For more, see Jocelyn Bonnes Bowne et al., “A meta-analysis of class sizes and ratios in early childhood education programs: Are thresholds of quality associated with greater impacts on cognitive, achievement, and socioemotional outcomes?,” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis , 2017, Volume 39, Number 3.

Developmentally appropriate learning standards

Just as in K–12 education, standards that determine what children should learn in pre-K can drive classroom practice and accountability. Most states have a set of standards in place, but these standards vary. 15 Susan B. Neuman and Kathleen Roskos, “The state of pre-kindergarten standards,” Early Childhood Research Quarterly , 2005, Volume 20. High-quality pre-K standards in general strive to address the specific academic and social needs of four-year-olds 16 The state of preschool 2021 , 2022; Elena Bodrova, Deborah Leong, and Rima Shore, “Child outcome standards in pre-K programs: What are standards; what is needed to make them work?,” National Institute for Early Education Research, March 2004. and directly shape curricular choices and professional development for teachers. Nationally standardized expectations, such as the Head Start Early Learning Outcomes Framework, could provide a road map for determining learning standards in line with state and local expectations of children in grades K–3. A lack of alignment risks compromising students’ learning and could require kindergarten teachers to undergo redundant instruction. 17 Laura M. Justice et al., “Academics of the early primary grades: Investigating the alignment of instructional practices from pre-K to third grade,” Early Education and Development , 2022, Volume 33, Number 7.

Just as in K–12 education, standards that determine what children should learn in pre-K can drive classroom practice and accountability.

Effective curriculums

Multiple research studies have demonstrated that young children learn social and academic skills best and most easily through play. 18 Myae Han et al., “Does play make a difference? How play intervention affects the vocabulary learning of at-risk preschoolers,” American Journal of Play , Volume 3, Number 1; Michael Yogman et al., “The power of play: A pediatric role in enhancing development in young children,” Pediatrics , September 2018, Volume 142, Number 3. Historically, more affluent families have gravitated most toward play-based early-learning models, but all children, including those from low-income households, could benefit from this approach. 19 Anya Kamenetz, “A top researcher says it’s time to rethink our entire approach to preschool,” NPR, February 10, 2022. Similar to learning standards, linking pre-K and K–3 curriculums could ensure smooth learning transitions and logical content progressions for children.

Specialized teacher education

Strong pre-K programs tend to have lead teachers with specialized training in early childhood instruction and child development. 20 Untangling the evidence , January 2019; Matthew Manning et al., “The relationship between teacher qualification and the quality of the early childhood education and care environment,” Campbell Systematic Reviews , Volume 13, Number 1; Marisa Bueno, Linda Darling-Hammond, and Danielle Gonzales, A matter of degrees: Preparing teachers for the pre-K classroom , Pew Center on the States, March 2010. At present, nearly all successful programs require a minimum of a bachelor’s degree for lead teachers. However, given the current labor shortage in early childhood education, states may want to consider a skills-based approach to identify those who have the skills to be successful but who have not yet obtained the credentials (that is, creating an on-ramp for currently uncertified early childhood teachers). 21 “Taking a skills-based approach to building the future workforce,” McKinsey, November 15, 2022.

Ongoing professional development

Successful programs offer teachers ongoing professional development that is aligned to the curriculum, incorporate on-the-job coaching, and include practical activities such as role-playing and demonstrations. This training is most effective when teachers have time to practice their new skills, are supported in reflecting on their practice, and have the time and space to set goals. 22 Catriona Elek and Jane Page, “Critical features of effective coaching for early childhood educators: A review of empirical research literature,” Professional Development in Education , Volume 45, Number 4. Coaching that specifically targets teacher–student interactions could improve student learning. 23 Daniel Lipscomb, Robert C. Pianta, and Erik Ruzek, “Indirect effects of coaching on pre-K students’ engagement and literacy skill as a function of improved teacher–student interaction,” Journal of School Psychology , April 2022, Volume 91.

Regular assessment of child progress

Individual child assessments offer visibility into a child’s progress and readiness for kindergarten. Research-backed tools such as Head Toes Knees Shoulders, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Teaching Strategies GOLD, and Woodcock–Johnson (WJ) tests measure student skills during everyday classroom activities and provide rich data for teachers to adjust their instructional practices during the year. 24 For more, see Catherine E. Snow and Susan B. Van Hemel, eds., Early childhood assessment: Why, what, and how , Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2008; Ellen C. Frede, Kwanghee Jung, and Shannon Riley-Ayers, Early learning scale: Technical report , National Institute of Early Education Research, September 2010; Megan M. McClelland et al., “The Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders revised: Links to academic outcomes and measures of EF in young children,” Frontiers in Psychology , 2021; “Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test,” ScienceDirect; “Research,” Teaching Strategies; Bashir Abu-Hamour et al., “The use of Woodcock-Johnson tests for identifying students with special needs-a comprehensive literature review,” Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences , 2012, Volume 47. Classroom-level assessments can provide data to families to inform program choice, to system administrators to maintain program accountability, and to leaders and coaches to tailor support to teachers. One of the most widely deployed assessments is the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), which has demonstrated reliability, validity, and an ability to predict student outcomes. 25 CLASS can effectively assess teacher–student interactions in ways that have direct impacts on student outcomes. For more, see Karen M. La Paro, Robert C. Pianta, and Megan Stuhlman, “The Classroom Assessment Scoring System: Findings from the prekindergarten year,” The Elementary School Journal , May 2004, Volume 104, Number 5; Jason T. Downer et al., “The Individualized Classroom Assessment Scoring System (inCLASS): Preliminary reliability and validity of a system for observing preschoolers’ competence in classroom interactions,” Early Childhood Research Quarterly , Volume 25, Number 1; The state of preschool 2021 , 2022.

Robust data systems

Ideally, pre-K program data systems are linked to the state’s overarching K–12 data systems to track alignment and impact over time. Many states are struggling to get truly integrated systems off the ground due to a set of common barriers—fragmentation in the early childhood system, inconsistent data use and collection, and confidentiality concerns. 26 Donald J. Hernandez, “PreK-3rd: Next steps for state longitudinal data systems,” Foundation for Child Development, April 2012. Most states have adopted Quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS) as a tool to standardize and communicate publicly about early childhood program quality. Evidence from successful state programs demonstrates that pairing QRIS with other proven strategies to boost pre-K quality can be very effective. 27 Daphna Bassok, Preston Magouirk, Anna J. Markowitz, “Systemwide quality improvement in early childhood education: Evidence from Louisiana,” AERA Open , 2021, Volume 7. Some studies have cautioned that the link between QRIS scores and student outcomes is limited. For more, see Jill S. Cannon et al., “Quality Rating and Improvement Systems for early care and education programs: Making the second generation better,” RAND Corporation, 2017. This has not been the case in all states, though: for QRIS to improve quality, states should consider investing in complementary program supports.

A, B, or C: Crucial pre-K program decisions

States will weigh the trade-offs of numerous decisions. Six are particularly pressing.

Define the scope: Universal versus targeted

Considering universal versus targeted pre-k.

Universal programs are, by virtue of their sheer size, more expensive to operate—but they can introduce potential benefits as well as costs.

All children, regardless of background or socioeconomic status, gain greater language skills and experience social, emotional, and cognitive benefits in socioeconomically diverse pre-K classrooms. 1 “Strong foundations: Promoting diverse and inclusive preschool settings,” The Hunt Institute, The Education Trust, The Century Foundation, and Educational Alliance, June 2022. One study found that low-income children benefited more from universal programs than targeted programs. Though there are many variables at play, the researcher posited that at least some of the variance was due to the in-classroom peer effect of a heterogeneous classroom. For more, see Elizabeth U. Cascio, Does universal preschool hit the target? Program access and preschool impacts , National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, number 23215, March 2017. Universal programs have a higher likelihood of enrolling a socioeconomically diverse class than targeted programs, given that they are open to everyone, have simpler application processes with less of a time burden, and carry fewer social stigmas than targeted programs intended for lower-income families. Indeed, targeted programs do not appeal to everyone, even the families for whom they’re intended. Research would suggest that low-income families are more likely to enroll in a universal program than a targeted program for which they are eligible. 2 One global analysis found that highly targeted programs find takers for 56 percent of available resources at most, and some found takers for as low as 3 percent of resources. Universal programs, meanwhile, had significantly higher adoption rates, including from targeted populations. For more, see Diloá Athias and Stephen Kidd, Hit and miss: An assessment of targeting effectiveness in social protection with additional analysis , Development Pathways working paper, updated June 2020. Moreover, some research suggests that universal programs—particularly those that benefit children—enjoy a broader, more sustained coalition of support. 3 W. Steven Barnett, Kirsty Brown, and Rima Shore, “The universal vs. targeted debate: Should the United States have preschool for all?,” National Institute for Early Education Research, April 2004; Robert Greenstein, “Targeting, universalism, and other factors affecting social programs’ political strength,” Brookings, June 28, 2022.

The benefits of universal programming are clear, but everything hinges on implementation—specifically access that is both universal and inclusive, as well as sufficiently funded.

Universal access. Some localities have created programs open to all children, but due to a lack of sufficient funding or capacity, not every child who wants a seat gets one. With scarcity, children who face the greatest barriers to entry—those whose parents may lack the resources or information to enroll them—may be the least likely to gain access.

Sufficient funding. Across existing public pre-K programs, per-child spending varies widely. The National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) estimated in 2020 that only four states (New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma, West Virginia) and Washington, DC, were spending enough on their public pre-K program to support a full-day, high-quality program with teacher salaries comparable to those in K–12. 4 Allison H. Friedman-Krauss et al., The state of preschool 2020 , National Institute for Early Education Research, 2021. NIEER’s rationale to suggest that pre-K teachers be paid the same as K–12 teachers is tied to certification requirements, arguing that if teachers are held to the same standards in pre-K as in K–12, states will need to pay comparably to maintain a workforce. Access without quality can do a disservice to the children who participate. 5 Anya Kamenetz, “A top researcher says it’s time to rethink our entire approach to preschool,” NPR, February 10, 2022. Where states have limited funds, they should consider the balance between serving fewer children at a higher cost per child and serving all children at a lower cost per child.

Inclusive access. Some researchers caution that even the most well-intentioned universal programs will exacerbate the achievement gap as more privileged families flock to the higher-quality programs and leave lower-income families to programs of lesser caliber. 6 Scott Latham et al., “Racial disparities in pre-K quality: Evidence from New York City’s universal pre-K program,” Educational Researcher , July 2021, Volume 50, Number 9. Some states have elected to focus on closing these critical gaps by serving only those children most at risk of entering kindergarten underprepared, as compared to other students. 7 Berkeley Blog , “How public pre-K education for all can worsen racial disparities,” blog entry by Bruce Fuller, April 22, 2021. But jurisdictions can take intentional steps to ensure that all programs within a universal system are high quality through targeted coaching and additional support to programs in higher-poverty neighborhoods.

Today, there are strong examples of both targeted and universal programs, and programs of both types have struggled to achieve quality. In either model, states need to consider the other design choices that will create more even quality across the entire system, such as appropriate pay for teachers, targeted coaching and support, and additional services for at-risk families and children. Some states have also considered a hybrid—targeted universalism—in which the program is open to everyone but with focused recruitment or additional services for eligible populations. 8 William Gormley, “Universal vs. targeted pre-kindergarten: Reflections for policymakers” in The current state of scientific knowledge on pre-kindergarten effects , Brookings, April 2017.

Universal programs are open to all children, whereas targeted programs have eligibility criteria. Views differ—sometimes widely—on different program types. Ultimately, states could consider how much they could spend on pre-K and how best to meet the needs of children who stand to gain the most from a high-quality pre-K experience (see sidebar “Considering universal versus targeted pre-K”).

Locate the funding

To build a successful pre-K program, states will need a sustainable funding source, and most provide funding over and above the limited federal resources available. A few states allocate pre-K funding as part of their K–12 funding formula. 28 Bruce Atchison, Louisa Diffey, and Emily Parker, How states fund pre-K: A primer for policymakers , Education Commission of the States, February 2018. At least five states use funding from their state lottery for pre-K, and several states use so-called sin taxes from alcohol and tobacco. Some states are using one-time American Rescue Plan (ARP) funding to support pre-K expansion efforts or to expand access and eligibility, even if only temporarily. For more, see Lori Connors-Tadros, Kathy Stohr, and GG Weisenfeld, “States sharing strategies to target federal funds to an integrated, equitable, high-quality system of early care and education,” National Institute for Early Education Research, June 30, 2021. Some states (and localities) have funded pre-K out of their general budget. Others have identified new revenue sources. Still others have used public–private partnerships for specific program components, such as new program pilots, assessment rollouts, or data system expansions. However, private funding to date has not been extensive enough to support annual operating costs for large-scale pre-K programs.

Establish clear governance

In most states, the department of education has principal oversight over the statewide pre-K program. Some states have created an agency focused on early childhood education; others split responsibilities across multiple agencies; and a few have delegated such programs to health and human services departments. Regardless of who is in charge, the decisions made at the state level have implications at the local level. Some states require funding and management to flow through local education agencies (LEAs) or similar entities, which may oversee key decisions such as determining the district’s minimum hours of pre-K operation, outlining professional-development requirements for teachers, and even establishing class size and teacher-to-student ratios. 29 Special report: State preschool administration , National Institute for Early Education Research, 2020.

Determine accountability for services

States have different criteria for determining how public funds are allocated between providers. Some states mandate that funds be split between public and private providers. For example, West Virginia state law requires that 50 percent of pre-K classrooms in each county be in private settings. 30 “2019 state of West Virginia pre-K,” West Virginia Department of Education, 2020. Other states leave the decision to localities. There are examples of programs with strong outcomes in a public-school-only model, such as in Boston, and of programs that allow for multiple delivery models, such as in Oklahoma.

Decide whether to serve three-year-olds

Research suggests that children benefit from a second year of high-quality preschool, 31 Irma Arteaga et al., “One year of preschool or two – Is it important for adult outcomes? Results from the Chicago Longitudinal Study of the Child-Parent Centers,” Economics of Education Review , June 2014, Volume 40. which would translate into more children entering pre-K at age three rather than waiting until age four. Based on the research and the precedent being set by some cities, some states might consider supporting two years of preschool, which could be an immense help to low-income families. 32 “Strong foundations: Promoting diverse and inclusive preschool settings,” The Hunt Institute, The Education Trust, The Century Foundation, and Educational Alliance, June 2022.

Given limited resources, most states and localities have focused, for now, on implementing one year of preschool. Today’s existing two-year pre-K programs—such as those in Boston, New York City, and Washington, DC—started with four-year-olds and expanded to include three-year-olds because the programs demonstrated positive outcomes and cities were able to identify additional resources to support the effort.

Offer wraparound services

Federal Head Start program standards require the provision of basic health and hygiene services, referrals for coordinated services, parent education, and a role for parents in program governance. Many Head Start and other pre-K programs include families as powerful tools for improving child outcomes by recognizing the strengths and diversity of their backgrounds and by finding ways to engage them in classroom activities. Students could benefit from additional services, but there is insufficient research to definitively conclude that this is critical to quality as states prioritize where to spend their funds—particularly given that implementation of such practices is largely determined at the classroom level or center level. 33 “Family engagement,” Head Start Early Childhood Learning & Knowledge Center.

Today’s existing two-year pre-K programs started with four-year-olds and expanded to include three-year-olds because the programs demonstrated positive outcomes.

How much will this cost?

RAND’s estimated average cost of $12,700 per child to run a high-quality, full-day pre-K program in 2019 is not far from that year’s national per-child K–12 average of $13,187. 34 Lynn A. Karoly et al., Understanding the cost to deliver high-quality publicly funded pre-kindergarten programs , RAND Corporation, 2021; 2019 Public Elementary-Secondary Education Finance Data, US Census Bureau, updated October 8, 2021. Actual spending on pre-K is barely half that figure: the national average in 2021 was just $6,804. 35 The state of preschool 2021 , 2022. To fund a high-quality program, states will need to narrow this gap.

Of course, there is no magic number to be spent per child to achieve high quality. However, there are prerequisites. There need to be enough teachers to maintain a reasonable classroom ratio. A full day of services for children needs to be funded, and teacher compensation needs to be sufficient to attract qualified candidates and limit turnover. The overall scale of certain administrative operations, such as assessment and coaching, varies widely from state to state and may be funded by other sources, such as local payment matching—in which case states need not bake those costs directly into their own per-child spending. And while many states have left some one-time federal stimulus funds unspent, there may be significant up-front investments they could make now to support a pre-K expansion, including spending on facilities, workforce development, and other program start-up costs.

Pre-K is an investment that delivers proven, widespread benefits, and research suggests an increasingly clear sense of how states can design programs to unlock them. There are certainly risks, particularly if the amount spent per child is insufficient for operating a quality program. But there are steps states could take to design programs that fit local circumstances, resources, and goals. The research suggests that investing in the next generation of students, particularly as we continue to recover from the economic and educational impacts of COVID-19, is likely to prove well worth the cost.

Jake Bryant is a partner in McKinsey’s Seattle office, and Jimmy Sarakatsannis is a senior partner in the Washington, DC, office. Emmy Liss and Ellen Viruleg are advisers to McKinsey’s Education Practice. Emmy Liss worked at the New York City Department of Education from April 2015 to March 2022 and served as the chief operating officer for the Division of Early Childhood Education and Student Enrollment.

The authors wish to thank Tonika Cheek Clayton and Rachel Valentino for their contributions to this article.

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