Great Preschools: What about This? What about That?

Several items come up often in parent conversations, so we thought we'd address them head on here. Some of these can affect the quality of your child's preschool experience, but they often are misleading because they do not necessarily contribute to quality in the big ways that the Great Preschool Quality Factors do.

• Class Size: class size has a small positive effect on preschool outcomes. Smaller classes are not always used to respond to individual children's developmental needs, even though smaller classes should make it easier for a preschool focused on quality. All else equal, choose a preschool with smaller classrooms or more teachers per classroom.
• Student:Teacher Ratio: this also has a small positive effect on preschool outcomes. Decades ago, poor ratios were more common. Today, you are less likely to see this. Most preschools have decent ratios now, and small differences in ratios are not going to be the critical factor in most children's preschool experiences. There's some evidence that equally empowered co-teachers are more effective than a lead and assistant teacher. If your child is an infant through diaper age, ratio will certainly affect how much time teachers can possibly spend developing children versus maintaining the diaper station (though the excellent teacher will consider diaper changes an interpersonal bonding opportunity!) All else equal, the more teachers the merrier the interactions between less-stressed teachers and children may be. Avoid huge classrooms or even moderately sized ones with only one teacher.
• Teacher Qualifications: research indicates that more educated teachers typically use richer vocabularies with children, producing higher levels of cognitive development. Research has not shown teacher experience to have a positive effect (nor negative) in preschool. All things equal, seek a preschool with better educated teachers. But there's more to teaching and developing a child than knowing calculus. This is an issue to get all emotional about: research indicates that teachers' positive emotional interactions with children matter more than degrees for improving cognitive learning. They should bond emotionally with children through warm personal interaction, understand the developmental content and materials being used, and know how to develop a wide variety of children according to the preschool's design. Most important is that the best teachers stay and more want to work in a school, and that is determined largely by the preschool leader.
• Multi-age Classrooms, Staying with Same Teachers: this approach has many advocates, and conceptually it makes sense that children would learn to be leaders, learners and peers in multi-age groups. A multi-age classroom lets your child play varying social roles over the years and often keep the same teacher, too. Having the same teacher for more than one year can help that teacher better keep up with your child's learning and get to know your child's needs better (especially in the absence of other school support to help her do this). But many a child has been stuck with a poor quality teacher or one whose one-size-fits-all approach was not a good fit with the child's needs - for two or more years! If you choose multi-age, ensure that your older child will be challenged and your younger one not left in the social and academic dust. Choose multi-age if you value the potential social benefit or if the preschool also is of high quality.
• School Year Length: children learn more when they spend a longer year in school, but the effect diminishes the closer they are to typical development for their ages. So make this choice for your own convenience or to fit your child's particular need for more - or less - time in preschool.