The Role of Children’s Kindergarten Classroom Experiences in Sustaining the Benefits of Pre-K

• In Event: What Matters in Sustaining the Benefits of Pre-K through Early Elementary School

Abstract

There is clear evidence that children who attend pre-K at age 4, as compared with those without pre-K experience, are more ready for kindergarten in key academic domains (Phillips et al. 2018). Despite this promising evidence, a number of studies report that the benefits of pre-K diminish soon after program completion (e.g., Lipsey et al, 2018). Given this pattern of findings, there has been growing interest in the role of children’s subsequent kindergarten experiences in maintaining these early advantages. When considering children’s kindergarten experiences, there has been particular interest in understanding the role of teachers’ classroom practices, including their: Interactional quality, dosage of academic instruction, and mode of instruction (e.g., percent of time in small group, whole group etc.). Thus, the present study sought to fill in key gaps in knowledge by considering the extent to which kindergarten teachers’ classroom practices matter for sustaining the benefits of pre-K through the end of kindergarten.

To do so, we sampled 797 children (49% female, 70% White) from a large, mid-western school district. Approximately 75% of children attended pre-K at the age of 4, with the remainder being cared for at home or by a caregiver in another informal setting. Children’s language, literacy, and math skills were measured with age-normed standard scores in the fall and spring of kindergarten with the Woodcock-Johnson. Interactional quality was measured with the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (Pianta et al., 2008) and the mode of classroom instruction and dosage of academic instruction were reported on by teachers. All regression models controlled for a rich set of child and family covariates (see Table 1) and accounted for the nesting of children in classrooms. Missing data were addressed with 50 imputed datasets.

As can be seen in Table 1, results from our covariate-adjusted regression analyses revealed that graduates of pre-K entered kindergarten demonstrating stronger language, literacy, and math skills as compared with non-attenders, with an effect size difference of roughly .20. With that said, there was also empirical evidence of convergence: The academic advantages of pre-K diminished by 80% 6-7 months later. With respect to these diminishing associations, we find that all children outgained their same-age peers from across the country in literacy and math, but non-attenders demonstrated greater gains in kindergarten (see Figure 1). At the same time, however, neither non-attenders nor pre-K graduates outgained their same age peers in language.

Having established empirical evidence of convergence, we next considered whether children’s subsequent kindergarten experiences mattered. Results revealed that pre-K attenders and non-attenders were not systematically sorting into different types of kindergarten classrooms. Additionally, kindergarten interactional quality, dosage of instruction, nor mode of instruction moderated the degree of convergence. Of the 20 interactions estimated, none were significant.

Collectively, our findings provide little support for the notion that kindergarten teachers’ classroom practices contribute to sustaining the benefits of pre-K. In moving forward, we will check the robustness of our findings by using observational measures of both teachers’ mode and dosage of instruction in addition to the rigor of their classroom instruction.

Authors

• Arya Ansari, Ohio State University
  Presenting Author

• Kelly M Purtell, Ohio State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Laura M. Justice, Ohio State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tzu-Jung Lin, Ohio State University
  Non-Presenting Author