Can Instructional Alignment Sustain the PreK Boost? Evidence from the Boston Public Schools

• In Event: Getting on the Same Page: Systems Alignment to Support Early Transitions and Early Learning

Abstract

The current study uses data from PreK, kindergarten, and first grade classrooms in the Boston Public Schools (BPS) to describe a district-wide approach to align PreK and elementary school with a cross-grade curriculum and professional development model called Focus on Early Learning. The study describes the extent to which children’s instructional experiences were aligned over time, and then tests whether higher levels of instructional alignment were associated with sustained benefits of the BPS PreK program on academic skills in the spring of kindergarten and first grade. Findings provide evidence on whether instructional alignment and misalignment are key factors explaining typical fadeout/convergence of the PreK boost (Stipek et al., 2017).

Participants included 20 public elementary schools implementing Focus on Early Learning in PreK (51 teachers), kindergarten (77 teachers), and first grade (46 teachers). The student sample includes 256 children who were randomly selected in PreK and followed into kindergarten and first grade and 242 children who did not attend BPS PreK but enrolled in BPS for elementary school. Students were demographically diverse (68% eligible for free/reduced price lunch; 80% non-White).

BPS coaches conducted two 2 – 3 hour long classroom observations in the spring of each year and used a validated measure (Maier et al., 2022) to assess intervention fidelity to the Focus on Early Learning curriculum in each grade. Researchers collected assessments of children’s language, literacy, and math skills in the fall and spring of kindergarten and spring of first grade.

Intervention fidelity was similar across grades with adherence levels of about 70%. Overall quality was rated as a 3.17 (SD = .59) on a scale from 1-5. There was also variation in fidelity within and across grades. Results from a latent profile analysis revealed evidence for four profiles of fidelity: 1) high alignment; 2) mixed: high fidelity in PreK and mixed fidelity in later grades); 3) mixed: low fidelity in PreK and mixed fidelity in later grades); and 4) low fidelity across grades.

The team used the profiles to fit multi-level models regressing each outcome in the spring of kindergarten and spring of first grade on indicators for the four profiles (with non-BPS PreK attenders as the reference) and a robust set of student- and family-level covariates. Instructional alignment was not associated with sustained gains in the spring of kindergarten but did predict gains – and thus sustained benefits of PreK -- in literacy (std. association = .47) and math skills (std. association = .28) through first grade. The profile for mixed: high-mixed was associated with fewer gains (and thus more convergence/fadeout) for literacy in kindergarten (std. association = -.51) and language in first grade (std. association = -.12).

Findings suggest that school districts can implement aligned curricula with acceptable levels of fidelity. Instructional alignment may help sustain the benefits of high-quality PreK, particularly at later time points. And experiencing high-quality PreK followed by unaligned elementary school was associated with fadeout/convergence as expected for some domains. Continued research and development on instructional alignment across early childhood and elementary school is warranted.

Authors

• Meghan Patricia McCormick, MDRC (Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation) - New York City
  Presenting Author

• Cullen MacDowell, MDRC

• Christina J Weiland, University of Michigan

• Mirjana Pralica, MDRC (Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation) - New York City

• Samuel Maves, MDRC

• Joann Hsueh, MDRC (Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation) - New York City

• Catherine E Snow, Harvard University

• Jason Sachs, Boston Public Schools