Are Students With Disabilities in Full-Day Kindergarten Programs More Likely to Attend School?

• In Event: Supporting Attendance Among Our Youngest Students: Emerging Evidence Around School Practices and Policies

Abstract

In recent years, there has been an expansion of full-day kindergarten (FDK) programs across the country, potentially due to changes in economic demands, family structure, or educational preferences. Thus far, research has focused on the relationship between FDK/part-day kindergarten (PDK) and children’s academic and behavioral outcomes (e.g., Author et al., 2016). But, there has been almost no examination of FDK and PDK differences for children with disabilities. This paper addresses this gap by asking how FDK links to absenteeism for children with disabilities. Kindergarten is a significant transitional period for all students, but this transition has been cited as being especially challenging for children with disabilities. Hence, a sparse understanding regarding how FDK versus PDK might link to attendance for children with disabilities during this critical year has made it difficult to design policy and guide practice for children required additional attention in school.
In order to address this gap, the present study inquired into whether attending FDK was linked to absence outcomes for children with disabilities. To do so, the analyses relied on the most contemporaneous national cohort of children in kindergarten – the ECLS-K:2011. This dataset was an invaluable source of information. First, it provided information on type of kindergarten program attended as well as absence information. With imputation and sample weights, it was possible to develop nationally-representative conclusions about FDK and absences for the sample of children with disabilities. Second, the dataset contained a wide span of information regarding children and their families, thereby allowing the empirical model to incorporate an unusually rich span of covariates to account for academic and teacher-rated behavioral entry skills, household factors (including SES), and geography.
Using both multiple regression and fixed effects models accounting for the nesting of children within schools, the findings showed that children with disabilities tended to have more absences when in FDK compared to being in PDK. In fact, FDK attendees had both a higher number of days absent as well as a greater likelihood of being chronically absent. Children from lower SES families tended to have fewer absences in FDK compared to children in FDK from higher SES families. Girls with disabilities tended to have more absences in FDK compared to boys with disabilities. A final analysis found no significant differences by disability, implying that the results were felt more widely in the sample rather than specific to any particular group of children with disabilities.
Overall, the results of this study have important implications. While all children certainly face stressors during the transition to school, this process might be made more challenging when also coping with additional and unique challenges during a full day of school. And when faced with these additional stressors in the transition to kindergarten, children with disabilities in FDK programs may express this frustration or fatigue with school with negative feelings towards school, which materializes as school refusal behavior among young children and hence absences emerge.

Author

• Michael A. Gottfried, University of California - Santa Barbara