Looking to boost 'school readiness'? Try church attendance

In the latest issue of The Family in America, Bryce J. Christensen and Robert W. Patterson write:

For at least a generation, policy elites have considered "early education" -- a euphemism for more institutional daycare and nursery schools -- the Rosetta stone that unlocks the mysteries of the healthy development of young children. Yet a study by researchers at Mississippi State University, finding "robust and quite clear" links between parental church attendance and several measures of child development, suggests that the well being of children depends more on parents than on parental substitutes.