Half‐day to full‐day kindergarten: an analysis of educational change scores and demonstration of an educational research collaboration

Abstract

The benefits of all-day kindergarten are increasingly supported by educational policy groups. Rigorous, prospective empirical research is impractical for schools of limited fiscal means where education must take priority over institutional research. However, post-hoc analyses of archival and informal measures can provide invaluable information concerning educational issues of national concern. A method of university and elementary school collaboration was employed in evaluating the educational effects of a transition from half-day to full-day kindergarten in an economically challenged suburban-rural school district in Maine. A child developmental scale and educational measures were used to evaluate differences in improvement scores between children enrolled in half-day kindergarten one year and children enrolled in full-day kindergarten the following year. Additional measures addressed parent and teacher attitudes toward full-day kindergarten. Overall, children enrolled in full-day kindergarten showed greater improvement than children in half-day kindergarten. Results of teacher and parent questionnaires indicated a high degree of satisfaction with full-day kindergarten. The research effort, based on a service learning model, provided a costeffective strategy for recovering and analyzing archival data.

The Kindergarten Child: What Teachers and Administrators Need to Know to Promote Academic Success in all Children

“…Teacher perceptions from the Baskett et al (2005) study were uniformly positive with respect to finding increases in children's academic performance. A quote from Carnes and Albrecht (2007) summarizes the advantages kindergarten teachers found in implementing a full-day program:…”

“…To illustrate, Baskett et al (2005) found significant differences in measures of academic attainment between children who attended a half-day program year 1 and children who attended a full-day program year 2 in a suburban-rural community. These gains included many forms of reading and literacy skills such as story sequence and reading level.…”

“…These skills included abilities such as waits for turn when playing in group games, gains attention from peers in appropriate ways, has best friend of same sex, expresses anger with non-aggressive words rather than with physical action, and states goal for himself or herself and carries out activity. Baskett et al (2005) reported that students in the full-day program had significantly better ability to follow directions as assessed by objective measures. However, teachers' perceptions were mixed with respect to social-emotional behaviors, with some teachers reporting an increase in positive behaviors and others reporting an increase in difficult behaviors.…”

“…Parents were especially enthusiastic about the advantages of a full-day program for children who were not academically or developmentally prepared to start school. Baskett et al (2005) indicated that the major complaint from parents was that their children were tired. Otherwise, the parents in that study were highly favorable regarding their children's progress for both academic and social outcomes.…”

“…Finally, there are many factors that are part of the full-day program that may impact the outcomes assessed and explain the often inconsistent results found between studies of the benefits of full-day programs. For example, teacher training, curricula, classroom sizes, children's pre-kindergarten experiences, and community and parent investment in education to name a few (Baskett et al 2005).…”