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Background: Failure to complete secondary education often results from a process of educational disengagement. Studies of teen childbearing and high school completion have not adequately accounted for the role of school disengagement prior to conception and may overestimate causal impacts of teen childbearing. Methods: We link New York City birth and school records to study a cohort of 22,484 Black and Latina public school students. We measure disengagement with monthly absences from age 12 until the month before conception and identify five preconception attendance trajectories using group-based trajectory modeling. Results: Preconception absenteeism can account for as much as half the deficit in high school completion associated with a teen birth. This finding is robust to statistical approaches, such as school fixed effects and inverse-probability-weighted regression adjustment. Conclusions: Our results suggest that programs intending to increase educational attainment among young women should emphasize attendance and engagement, rather than primarily teenage pregnancy prevention.

Background: School-based pregnancy prevention programs should optimally be offered while students are still engaged in school since early disengagement is strongly associated with risk of a teen birth. Methods: We used linked New York City birth and enrollment data (2005-2013), a sample of 6,809 teen mothers (mean age conception = 16.2 years). We measured preconception disengagement using monthly absences, age 12 until conception, and identified five attendance trajectories using group-based trajectory modeling. Results: We identified five attendance trajectories that were heterogeneous with respect to age of onset and rate of increase of absenteeism. In two groups, 80% were chronically absent (CA) [2-<4 absences/month] or severely chronically absent (SCA) [4+ absences/month] at age 12, and over 90% by age 13, when they averaged 3.8-5.1 absences/month. Despite heterogeneity, 37% of teen mothers were CA or SCA at age 12, increasing to 56% by age 14. By early high school, age 15, 63% of teen mothers had absenteeism problems; 26% were CA and 37% SCA. Conclusions: Most teen mothers were disengaged before high school, years before conception. School-based pregnancy prevention programs should be offered in middle school or earlier when at-risk students are not missing significant amounts of school and may be more receptive to prevention messages.

Research Findings: The Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised (ECERS-R) is widely used, often to evaluate whether preschool programs are of sufficient quality to improve children's school readiness. We examined the validity of the measure for this purpose. Item response theory (IRT) analyses revealed that many items did not fit together to measure single dimensions, particularly when rated by consultants as indicating aspects of quality relevant for multiple domains of child development. IRT results also conflicted with the scale developers' expectations in terms of whether markers that they attached to higher response categories represented higher quality empirically. When reanalyzed based on experts' ratings, IRT results also showed that relatively few indicators captured the moderate to high range of quality. Practice or Policy: Our results suggest that policymakers should carefully consider whether measures designed for specific purposes are appropriate for other high-stakes uses. We encourage continued refinement of existing quality measures, development of new measures, and the accumulation of evidence for their various uses.

The Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised (ECERS-R) is widely used to associate child care quality with child development, but its validity for this purpose is not well established. We examined the validity of the ECERS-R using the multidimensional Rasch partial credit model (PCM), factor analyses, and regression analyses with data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Birth Cohort. The PCM identified rating category disordering, indicating previously unrecognized problems with the scale's response process validity. Factor analyses identified neither a single factor nor the ECERS-R six subscales, replicating prior research regarding the scale's structural validity. Criterion validity results were mixed, with small effect sizes for regressions predicting child outcomes and moderate effect sizes for regressions predicting teacher-reported quality. Our results lend empirical support to recent critiques of the ECERS-R, and we discuss implications for its future use and for the development of future measures. (Contains 5 tables, 1 figure and 6 footnotes.)

Children spend a considerable amount of time in preschools and child care centers. As a result, these settings may have an influence on their diet, weight, and food security, and are potentially important contexts for interventions to address nutritional health. The Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) is one such intervention. No national study has compared nutrition-related outcomes of children in CACFP-participating centers to those of similar children in non-participating centers. We use a sample of four-year-old children drawn from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort to obtain estimates of associations between CACFP program participation and consumption of milk, fruits, vegetables, fast food, and sweets, and indicators of overweight, underweight status and food insecurity. We find that, among low-income children, CACFP participation moderately increases consumption of milk and vegetables, and may also reduce the prevalence of overweight and underweight. Effects on other outcomes are generally small and not statistically significant. (Contains 1 figure and 2 tables.)

The Arnett Caregiver Interaction Scale (CIS) has been widely used in research studies to measure the quality of caregiver-child interactions. The scale was modeled on a well-established theory of parenting, but there are few psychometric studies of its validity. We applied factor analyses and item response theory methods to assess the psychometric properties of the Arnett CIS in a national sample of toddlers in home-based care and preschoolers in center-based care from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort. We found that a bifactor structure (one common factor and a second set of specific factors) best fits the data. In the Arnett CIS, the bifactor model distinguishes a common substantive dimension from two methodological dimensions (for positively and negatively oriented items). Despite the good fit of this model, the items are skewed (most teachers/caregivers display positive interactions with children) and, as a result, the Arnett CIS is not well suited to distinguish between caregivers who are "highly" versus "moderately" positive in their interactions with children, according to the items on the scale. Regression-adjusted associations between the Arnett CIS and child outcomes are small, especially for preschoolers in centers. We encourage future scale development work on measures of child care quality by early childhood scholars. (Contains 8 tables.)

Parents face a trade-off in the effect of child-care problems on employment. Whereas large settings may increase problems because of child illness, small group care may relate to provider unavailability. Analyzing the NICHD Study of Early Child Care, we find that child-care centers and large family day care lead to mothers' greater work absences because of a sick child, but not to maternal job exits. Greater work absences because of unavailability of small home-based providers are associated with mothers' job exits, especially when mothers have low earnings and use nonrelative caregivers. Our findings accentuate the need for improved hygiene practices in child care, expanded personal leave coverage for parents, and greater backup care for sick and well children.