The Pre-K Boost Into Kindergarten

• In Event: 31.066 - Patterns of Preschool Enrollment Across Diverse Localities: Results From the Early Learning Research Network

Abstract

Almost 70% of low-income 4-year-olds across the country are enrolled in public Pre-K programs (Barnett et al. 2013). For many children, Pre-K represents the start of their educational careers. Although promising for improving children’s early learning (Lipsey et al., 2018; Puma et al., 2012), low-income children in typical U.S. programs are not ready for the first day of kindergarten with regards to their academic and social-emotional skills, and only a quarter of children across the country meet expectations for literacy and math at school entry (Bernstein et al., 2014). Further, some large-scale evaluations suggest that Pre-K has only small effects that can fade over time and may be undetectable by third grade (Camilli et al., 2010; Lipsey et al., 2018; Puma et al., 2012). Accordingly, in this study we examine differences in school entry skills between low-income children who did and did not attend public Pre-K in one of the largest school districts in the U.S.
Participants were 2,048 children enrolled in 435 Kindergarten classrooms in one mid-Atlantic public-school district in the 2017-2018 school year. Approximately 60% of sample children participated in either a district- or a county-based public Pre-K in the prior year, and the other 40% met district criteria for Pre-K enrollment but did not enroll in any center-based pre-K the prior year. Children were predominantly Latino (60%), African American (14%), Asian (10%), white (4%), and the remaining 10% identified as mixed race, Native American, or other racial background. Fifty-eight percent of families spoke Spanish, 19% spoke English, and 24% spoke a non-Spanish or -English language. Children’s academic skills were measured using the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement (WJ-III; Woodcock et al., 2001), including their early reading skills (composite of Letter-word Identification and Picture Vocabulary), mathematics reasoning (composite of Applied Problems and Quantitative Concepts), and academic knowledge. Children’s executive function skills were assessed using the Backward Digit Span task (BDS; Carlson, 2005), Head Toes Knees Shoulders task (HTKS; Ponitz et al. 2009), and Pencil Tap Test (Smith-Donald et al., 2007). Teachers reported on children’s social competency using the Teacher-Child Rating Scale (Hightower, et al., 1986).
Results from regression models are presented in Table 1. We regressed each of the outcomes on whether the child attended public Pre-K, whether they spoke Spanish at home or another language (relative to English), their income-to-needs ratio, whether they were male, and their age in months, using a Huber-White sandwich estimator to adjust standard errors for the nesting of children within classrooms. Effect size differences favoring Pre-K attenders over non-attenders ranged from 0.09 (Social Competency) to 0.40 (WJ reading skills), with Pre-K attenders WJ math skills 0.38 standard deviation units larger than non-attenders. Executive function differences were small but consistently positive (PT–0.29, BDS–0.13, HTKS–0.28). As analytical work continues, we will estimate these as multilevel models with a richer set of controls to account for selection into attending Pre-K. These results suggest that Pre-K attendance among students in this large school district was associated with immediate Kindergarten school entry skills.

Authors

• Erik Ruzek, University of Virginia

• Jessica Vick Whittaker, University of Virginia

• Robert Pianta, University of Virginia

• Virginia E. Vitiello, Teachstone Training, LLC