Poster #183 - Examining Classroom Quality as a Moderator Between Pre-Kindergarten Participation and School Readiness

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - School Readiness/Childcare

Integrative Statement

Introduction: School readiness lays the foundation for children’s success in school (Romano et al., 2010). Participation in state-funded pre-kindergarten (pre-k) is associated with increased school readiness skills such as literacy, numeracy, executive function (EF), and social-emotional skills (Weiland &Yoshikawa, 2013). Recently, there has been a call for research that examines the conditions under which state-funded pre-k optimizes children’s school readiness (Phillips et al., 2017). It has also been established that teacher-child interactions are associated with children’s school readiness skills, especially after a certain threshold of high quality is met (Hatfield et al., 2016). Emerging evidence has shown that aspects of teacher-child interactions moderate associations between state-funded pre-k participation and school readiness. For instance, participation in one universal state-funded pre-k program and children’s cognitive skills was strongest when instructional support was high (Johnson et al., 2016). Replication research is needed utilizing different samples (e.g., low-income) and non-academic school readiness outcomes (e.g., EF) to explore whether these findings generalize and whether associations maintain with different outcomes. The current study examined the extent to which associations between participation in a targeted state-funded pre-k program and children’s literacy, numeracy, EF, and social-emotional skills was moderated by the quality of teacher-child interactions. It was hypothesized that: a) high instructional support will moderate associations between pre-k participation and numeracy and literacy; b) high classroom organization will moderate associations between pre-k participation and EF; and c) high emotional support will moderate associations between pre-k participation and social-emotional skills, EF, and literacy.
Method: The current study uses data from an evaluation of a state-funded pre-k program including children enrolled in pre-k and those in a matched comparison group. The sample consisted of 558 children from two cohorts who were 57.75 months old on average, 50% female, and predominantly from families with low incomes (i.e., mean monthly income of $1,574). The race/ethnicity distribution of the sample is, 43.7% Black, 31.9% White, 12.0% Hispanic, 10.4% multiracial, 0.9% Asian, and 0.7% unknown. Children’s school readiness assessments and surveys were collected during fall and spring of preschool and included: the Letter-Word and Applied Problems subtests of the Woodcock-Johnson IV Tests of Achievement (Schrank et al., 2014), the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders task (McClelland et al., 2014), and the teacher-reported Social Skills Improvement System Rating Scales (Gresham & Elliott, 2008). Research assistants assessed teacher-child interactions using the Pre-K Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS; Pianta et al., 2008) once in the winter of the preschool year. Each of the CLASS domains were dichotomized to be either “met threshold” or “did not meet threshold” (emotional support and classroom organization threshold = 5 and instructional support threshold = 2.5).
Results: Two-level multilevel linear models were conducted for each school readiness domain and included a variety of control variables. Results indicated one significant interaction (see Table 1 for results from the emotional support models and Figure 1). Specifically, and unexpectedly, children in the comparison group had significantly higher levels of literacy when emotional support did not meet the quality threshold (b = 2.74, SE = 0.78, p < .001).

Authors

• Adassa Budrevich, Purdue University
  Presenting Author

• Katrina Lea Schmerold, Purdue University
  Non-Presenting Author

• James Elicker, Purdue University
  Non-Presenting Author

• David Purpura, Purdue University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sara Schmitt, Purdue University
  Non-Presenting Author