Study finds possible link between ‘Sesame Street’ and school success

Melissa Kearney, an economics professor at this university, compared the academic performances of children who lived in areas that aired Sesame Street with those who did not.

New research suggests that people who watched Sesame Street as children might have done better in school because of it.

Using data from the U.S. Census, two researchers, including one from the University of Maryland, found indications that children who were potentially exposed to the show Sesame Street in early childhood were better equipped to keep up with classmates.

Melissa Kearney, an economics professor at this university, and Phillip Levine, an economics professor at Wellesley College, published this research through the National Bureau of Economic Research in June.

“The question we were trying to ask was whether the introduction of Sesame Street in 1969 had any lasting impact on children who were eligible to watch it when it first started,” Levine said.

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Levine and Kearney looked at children who would have been in preschool — under age six — when the show started in 1969, then tracked the grades they were in by 1980.

“We were able to find evidence of an impact on educational outcomes,” Levine said. “Educational development improved. Children were more likely to progress through the education system age-appropriately and less likely to be left behind a grade.”

Sesame Street was a show designed specifically as an extracurricular education tool for young children, Kearney explained.

Because of the physical limitations of television broadcasting at the time, only about two-thirds of the country had access to the show, which allowed the researchers to compare children who had access to the show with children who did not.

The data showed that in the early days of Sesame Street, children who could watch the show were more prepared when they got to elementary school, Kearney said.

The trend was especially pronounced for boys, black children and kids living in economically disadvantaged areas.

According to the study, moving from a county with weak reception of the show to one with strong reception reduced a child’s likelihood of falling behind in school by about 14 percent.

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Christy Tirrell-Corbin, director of the university’s dual certification program in early childhood and early childhood special education, said research on early brain development has demonstrated the critical need for high-quality early childhood experiences.

A great deal of learning takes place from birth to age 5, but not necessarily in a structured setting, she said, and research like this can provide valuable insight.

“A child certainly spends many hours over the course of a day or a week, or over the course of the formative years, outside of a classroom setting,” said Tirrell-Corbin, who was not involved in the study. “Any [outside] activity that can enhance a child’s learning experiences is going to have positive results.”

Sesame Street is a wonderful example of that kind of tool, she said. It exposes children to vocabulary and diversity, subjects found to improve overall learning outcomes.

Sesame Street was the largest early-childhood intervention tool the United States has ever had, Levine said. Millions of children watched it every year. And while this research doesn’t prove that Sesame Street is the best way to intervene in education, the study could have implications for other methods of improving learning, he said.

“We see that delivering this kind of electronic content can have beneficial effects in terms of school preparation and academic preparation,” Kearney said. “This study suggests there is potentially this low-cost, easily accessed method of doing that.”