Early Childhood Education by MOOC: Lessons from Sesame Street

The authors thank Riley Wilson for exceptional research assistance throughout this project. Amy Wickett also provided valuable assistance creating our coverage measure. This paper has benefitted tremendously from discussions with Liz Cascio, Doug Miller, Ben Olken, Diane Schanzenbach, and Sergio Urzua, as well as the comments of participants of seminars at MIT, Harvard University, University of Maryland, Wellesley College, Northwestern, the University of Illinois, the Federal Trade Commission, Georgetown University, and Williams College. We also thank Michael Henry at the University of Maryland Libraries (Special Collections in Mass Media & Culture) for his assistance in collecting archived Sesame Street information. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Spencer Foundation. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

• June 3, 2015