Should Students Attend Fully Day Kindergarten Debate Paper?

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The purpose of this assignment is for students to:

  • Identify current issues in the field of Early Childhood Education
  • Identify the history and various key points regarding a current issue in the field
  • Take a stance on a current issue in Early Childhood Education and support this stance with research on best practices.
  • Effectively advocate for a position on a current issue in early childhood education Step 1: Topic: Should Students attend Full Day Kindergarten
    Step 2: Research your selected topic. In order to take a stance on your topic, you will need to conduct some additional research. You should be able to find applicable articles to use to formulate your description and advocacy portions of this paper. You should not have to pay for any articles, so please save your money! Remember to try a variety of key words as you search for your articles!!! Try to use the most current research whenever possible. Step 3: Write an individual academic paper. In this academic paper you will essentially be debating yourself. You will be describing the issue you have selected, both sides of the debate and then take a stance on one side of the debate aligning with your own beliefs that are supported by the review research you conducted. The individual academic paper should include the following sections, conform to the page lengths specified, and address each of the items listed in the major sections. Introduction to the Issue (minimum one page in length)
    Present a general overview of the topic. · Present the issue’s roots in historical philosophies of early childhood education. · Discuss the importance for early childhood educators. · Why has this topic become an “issue”? A. The Debate (minimum 3-5 pages in length)
    Explain the debate.

· Describe the argument and position on each side of the debate.

· Explain the significance to contemporary society.

· Present the relevant viewpoints with 3-5 supporting statements.

· Provide citations within your text for each side of the debate using APA style.

B. Advocacy for One Side of the Debate (minimum 3-4 pages in length) Assume the position of a person advocating for that side of the debate and do the following:

· Provide a rationale for this advocacy position.

· Substantiate your position with 3-5 facts and the “personal” thinking that resulted in your advocacy.

· Outline how you would implement this advocacy position into your practice as an early childhood educator.

.In addition to the advocacy for one side of the debate, you will effectively advocate this position by writing a one page letter with five talking points to your state legislature Committee Chairman of the Committee on Education

· To support this stance, provide citations within your text using APA style.

This is an academic paper. As such it needs to be a rigorous presentation of your ideas with research to support those ideas. References need to be from reputable academic references such as peer-reviews journals and academic texts (no Wikipedia). A limited number of non-academic websites may be used to illustrate the issue.

Points may be deducted from the total for not following traditional academic protocol for written content, spelling, sentence structure, grammar, punctuation and word choice. Appropriate citations are expected throughout the paper and in APA format. Provide a list of references at the end of your paper that cites your references.


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Demanding Full-day Kindergarten Edelman, Marian Wright . Sun Reporter ; San Francisco, Calif. [San Francisco, Calif]06 Dec 2012: L5. ProQuest document link ABSTRACT (ABSTRACT) Public education in America is built on the foundation of equal opportunity for all children. But while most Americans think of all children as having access to a robust K-12 education syatem, in many places full-day kindergarten is a huge missing half step in the early learning continuum Research comparing full-day kindergarten ("Full-Day K") and half-day kindergarten suggests the children benefit more from developmentally appropriate FullDay K. Full-Day ? plays a vital role in children's educational development, boosting cognitive learning, creative problem-solving, social competence, promoting positive school outcomes including faster gains on literacy and language measures, better attendance through the primary grades, and higher academic achievement in later grades. As the expectations for kindergarten in the Common Core Standards show, kindergartners across the country also are being expected to meet more rigorous academic benchmarks than ever before just like students in every other grade. The case for making kindergarten equal to every other school day seems obvious. Yet too many children aren't given an opportunity to attend kindergarten for a full school day. Instead, access to Full-Day ? is more like playing a game of chance in which the lottery of geography and income determine who wins. Millions of children are the losers. Some school districts have voluntarily chosen to provide Full-Day ? for all students funded through local taxes. Others comstruct a hodge-podge of funding to provide Full-Day ? for some students dependent on factors such as whether a family qualifies for tuition assistance based on family income or whether the child is at risk of school failure. In 12 states, some children can access Full-Day ? only if their parents pay tuition for the half of the day not covered by public funds. FULL TEXT About 4 million American children celebrated a very big milestone this fall-their first day of kindergarten. Far too many were already a step or more behind their peers. If we want all of our children to be school-ready so that they can become college-, career-, and workforce-ready, it's long past time to offer universal quality prekindergarten followed by universal full-day kindergarten in the United States. A while back the bestselling book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten touched a chord with its simple messages: Share everything. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody. But those kinds of lessons sound very quaint today as 45 states and the District of Columbia move towards implementing Common Core Standards that shift the focus for kindergarteners to mastering a new list of skills such as solving addition and subtraction world problems, describing measuriable attributes of objects (such as length or weight), analyzing and comparing two- and three-dimensional shapes, using informal language to describe their similarties, differences, parts, and other attributes, spelling simple words phonetically, drawing on knowledge of sound-letter relationship and participating in shared research and writing projects. For too many kindergartens, though, one thing is still a throwback to the old days: going to school for only half a day. In order to master the skills covered in the Common Core Standards, the amount of time a kindergartener gets to go to school each day can vary from as little as 2 1/2 hours to a full day of six hours. As even a 5-year-old can PDF GENERATED BY SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 1 of 4 see, that's not fair. It's time to stop demanding performance from children we do not give the supports they need to succeed. Public education in America is built on the foundation of equal opportunity for all children. But while most Americans think of all children as having access to a robust K-12 education syatem, in many places full-day kindergarten is a huge missing half step in the early learning continuum Research comparing full-day kindergarten ("Full-Day K") and half-day kindergarten suggests the children benefit more from developmentally appropriate FullDay K. Full-Day ? plays a vital role in children's educational development, boosting cognitive learning, creative problem-solving, social competence, promoting positive school outcomes including faster gains on literacy and language measures, better attendance through the primary grades, and higher academic achievement in later grades. As the expectations for kindergarten in the Common Core Standards show, kindergartners across the country also are being expected to meet more rigorous academic benchmarks than ever before just like students in every other grade. The case for making kindergarten equal to every other school day seems obvious. Yet too many children aren't given an opportunity to attend kindergarten for a full school day. Instead, access to Full-Day ? is more like playing a game of chance in which the lottery of geography and income determine who wins. Millions of children are the losers. Consider these facts: Only 10 states and the District of Columbia require by statute that school districts provide publiclyfunded Full-Day K. An additional 34 states require school districts to provide half-day kindergarten, and 6 don't require school districts to provide kindergarten at all. Some school districts have voluntarily chosen to provide Full-Day ? for all students funded through local taxes. Others comstruct a hodge-podge of funding to provide Full-Day ? for some students dependent on factors such as whether a family qualifies for tuition assistance based on family income or whether the child is at risk of school failure. In 12 states, some children can access Full-Day ? only if their parents pay tuition for the half of the day not covered by public funds. States and school districts across the country have cut or delayed funding for Full-Day ? as budgets have tightened because of the recession. Unequal access to publiclyfunded full-day and full-week high quality kindergarten programs means too many young children lose a critical opportunity to develop and strengthen foundational skills necessary for success in school and lifelong learning. Many children who attend full day pre-K programs find themselves cut back to half days in kindergarten, which becomes a huge setback for them and hardship for their working families. And although a year of instructional time for kindergartners varies from 540 to 1,080 hours, the expectation of mastery of the Common Core Standards is the same from state to state and district to district no matter how much class time the children receive. If implementation of the rigorous Common Core standards is to succeed, Full-Day ? can no longer be viewed as an optional add-on, enrichment, or intervention program. It must become a stable part of the pre-K- 3rd grade early learning continuum inevery state and school district. What are children in your state - or your neighborhood - getting? Policymakers at all levels of government can help make Full-Day ? a reality for all children in urban, suburban, and rural districts. Join CDF in our campaign to make this happen. Kindergarteners like to try to do lots of things all by themselves but they need adults to help speak up for Full-Day K. AuthorAffiliation By Marian Wright Edelman NNPA Columnist AuthorAffiliation Marian Wright Edelman is president of the Children's Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to PDF GENERATED BY SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 2 of 4 ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. For more information go to www. childrensdefense.org. DETAILS Subject: Kindergarten; Skill development; Academic achievement; School districts; Access to education Location: United States--US Ethnicity: African American/Caribbean/African Publication title: Sun Reporter; San Francisco, Calif. Pages: L5 Number of pages: 1 Publication year: 2012 Publication date: Dec 6, 2012 Publisher: Sun Reporter Place of publication: San Francisco, Calif. Country of publication: United States, San Francisco, Calif. Publication subject: African American/Caribbean/African, Ethnic Interests Source type: Newspapers Language of publication: English Document type: Commentary ProQuest document ID: 1264426590 Document URL: http://login.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/12 64426590?accountid=4485 Copyright: Copyright Sun Reporter Dec 6, 2012 Last updated: 2012-12-29 Database: Ethnic NewsWatch LINKS PDF GENERATED BY SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 3 of 4 Get It! @ ASU, Get It! @ ASU Database copyright  2018 ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. Terms and Conditions Contact ProQuest PDF GENERATED BY SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 4 of 4 A Developmental Perspective on Full- versus Part-Day Kindergarten and Children's Academic Trajectories through Fifth Grade Author(s): Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, Christine P. Li-Grining and Carolina MaldonadoCarreño Source: Child Development, Vol. 79, No. 4 (Jul. - Aug., 2008), pp. 957-978 Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Society for Research in Child Development Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27563532 Accessed: 17-01-2018 04:20 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Society for Research in Child Development, Wiley are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Child Development This content downloaded from 129.219.247.33 on Wed, 17 Jan 2018 04:20:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Child Development, July/August 2008, Volume 79, Number 4, Pages 957-978 A Developmental Perspective on Full- Versus Part-Day Kindergarten and Children's Academic Trajectories Through Fifth Grade Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal Christine P. Li-Grining University of Pittsburgh Loyola University Chicago Carolina Maldonado-Carre?o University of Pittsburgh Children's kindergarten experiences are increasingly taking place in full- versus part-day programs, yet important questions remain about whether there are significant and meaningful benefits to full-day kindergarten. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study's Kindergarten Cohort (N = 13,776), this study takes a developmental approach to examining associations between kindergarten program type and academic trajectories from kindergarten (ages 4-6 years) through 5th grade (ages 9-12 years). Full-day kindergarten was associated with greater growth of reading and math skills from fall until spring of kindergarten. Initial academic benefits diminished soon after kindergarten. The fade-out of the full-day advantage is in part explained by differences in the children who attend part- and full-day kindergarten as well as school characteristics. Over the past 35 years, kindergarten programs in the United States have been transformed. When states 2006). Existing research on the benefits of full-day kindergarten has largely been conducted outside the and localities began implementing publicly funded developmental literature, where studies have focused kindergarten in the 1960s and 1970s, they consisted mostly on the educational aspects of full-day kinder mostly of part-day programs and focused on easing young children's transitions to school by providing opportunities to socialize and play in group settings. Fewer than 15% of all 5-year-olds attended full-day programs in the 1970s (Elicker & Mathur, 1997). In recent years, the number of children attending full day kindergarten programs has nearly doubled. At the beginning of the 1980s, just over 25% of U.S. children in kindergarten attended full-day programs (Burriss, 2000). By the end of the 1990s, this number grew to more than 55% (Walston & West, 2004). As the number of children in full-day kindergarten programs has grown, so too has research compar garten (Lee et al., 2006) or the policy debates sur rounding full-day kindergarten (Cannon, Jacknowitz, & Painter, 2006). Though effects on children's devel opment are of primary interest in studies of full day kindergarten programs, developmental models and analytic techniques have rarely been used in research comparing full- and part-day kindergarten. Grounded in bioecological theory, the goal of this study was to contribute a developmental perspective to the literature on kindergarten program type (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Bronfenbrenner & Morris 2006). Using data from the Early Childhood Longitu dinal Study's Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), we are our own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Spencer examine whether kindergarten program type is linked to initial gains in children's achievement trajectories, after taking into account important characteristics of out-of-school contexts and heterogeneity in the devel opment of academic skills. Furthermore, we consider how long into the elementary school years the advan tage of full- versus part-day kindergarten lasts. for their comments on prior drafts of this manuscript. We also thank Are There Benefits to Attending Full-Day Kindergarten? ing the effects of full- and part-day kindergarten on children's academic achievement (for a review, see Lee, Burkam, Ready, Honigman, & Meisels, The research reported in this article was made possible by a fellowship from the Spencer Foundation. The views expressed Foundation. We thank Emma Adam, Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, Tom Cook, Greg Duncan, Bob Pianta, Fred Morrison, and Sean Reardon Mathilda du Toit for technical support she provided for the HLM software. Any errors that remain are ours. A special thank you is also extended to the children and families who participated in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study's Kindergarten Cohort. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, Department of Psychology, University of Though some investigations on the benefits of attending full-day kindergarten have not found Pittsburgh, 4123 Sennott Square, 210 South Bouquet Street, ? 2008, Copyright the Author(s) pitt.edu. All rights reserved. 0009-3920/2008/7904-0011 Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Electronic mail may be sent to evotruba@ Journal Compilation ? 2008, Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. This content downloaded from 129.219.247.33 on Wed, 17 Jan 2018 04:20:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 958 Votruba-Drzal, Li-Grining, and Maldonado-Carre?o differences between children enrolled in full- versus part-day programs, more studies have documented significant benefits of full-day kindergarten for child ren's academic skills (for a review, see Lee et al., 2006). When compared to children attending part-day kin dergarten, those attending full-day kindergarten tend to perform better on tests of reading, math, and science achievement, and have lower levels of special education placements and grade retention (Cannon et al., 2006; Clark & Kirk, 2000; Cryan, Sheehan, Wiechel, & Bandy-Hedden, 1992; Elicker & Mathur, 1997; Entwisle, Alexander, Cadigan, & Pallas 1987; Gullo, 2000; Gullo, Bersani, Clements, & Bayless, 1986; Kaplan, 2002; Karweit, 1992; Lee et al., 2006; Walston & West, 2004; Weiss & Offenberg, 2002). Overall, these advantages tend to be small to moderate. A Developmental Approach to Studying Full-Day Kindergarten Noticeably absent from existing research on the benefits of full-day kindergarten have been the voices of developmental scholars, which is rather surprising, given the developmental nature of this policy ques tion. At the core of discussions about kindergarten program type is the question of whether full-day kindergarten is associated with meaningful differ ences in children's individual achievement trajecto ries during the kindergarten year and beyond, net of other important contexts that shape their develop ment. Developmental theory and analytic techniques are poised to make an important contribution to this policy discussion (Foster & Kalil, 2005). Developmen tal science highlights both the multicontextual nature of environmental influences on children's lives and the heterogeneity of developmental trajectories. By incor porating these two core tenets of developmental psychology into our analysis of kindergarten program type, we hope to strengthen our understanding of the benefits of full-day kindergarten attendance to child ren's academic achievement. Recognizing multiple contexts of children's development. Almost 30 years ago, Bronfenbrenner (1979) advanced the field of child development by introducing Ecological Systems Theory, which recog nizes the embeddedness of children's lives in multi ple contexts. In what subsequently became known as the bioecological model of human development, Bronfenbrenner argued for the study of child devel opment in ecological context or, as he stated so clearly, "in the actual environments in which human beings lived their lives'" (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006, p. 794). Although children's experiences in school play a prominent role in shaping their development throughout middle childhood, other contexts includ ing families and nonparental care settings have important influences on children's development. Yet, studies comparing full- versus part-day kinder garten have not sufficiently taken into account the influences of these out-of-school settings. Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that fami lies represent the most influential context in child ren's lives (Coleman, 1966; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [NICHD] Early Child Care Research Network, 2002). An important aspect of families' lives that has received notably less attention in the literature on full-day kindergarten is the cognitive stimulation parents provide for their children. Yet, learning experiences in the context of the home environment play a central role in shaping the development of children's academic skills during the preschool and early elementary school years (Morrison, Bachman, & Connor, 2005). Global meas ures of cognitive stimulation in the home environ ment have been linked to children's vocabulary, reading, and math skills (Bradley, Corwyn, Burchinal, McAdoo, & Garcia Coll, 2001; Smith, Brooks-Gunn, & Klebanov, 1997). These measures cover a broad range of learning experiences including the frequency with which parents read to children; teach them letters, numbers, and shapes; and provide them with cogni tively stimulating toys. One salient dimension of families' lives that has been addressed in research on full-day kindergarten is the economic condition of children's households (e.g., Cannon et al., 2006). One fifth of young children in the United States live in poverty (National Center for Children in Poverty, 2006), which prior studies have consistently identified as a risk factor for children's academic and cognitive skills (Dearing, McCartney, & Taylor, 2001; Duncan & Brooks-Gunn, 1997; McLoyd, 1998; Patterson, Kupersmidt, & Vaden, 1990; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000; Votruba-Drzal, 2006). Children from economically disadvantaged house holds tend to experience less consistent, supportive, and cognitively stimulating caregiving than those from middle- and upper-class families (Votruba Drzal, 2003, 2006). Moreover, children from low income households face a variety of risk factors that threaten their health and development. They are, for example, more likely to be raised in a single-parent household, have a teenage mother, experience family instability, and grow up in a neighborhood character ized by high levels of violence (Brooks-Gunn, Kleba nov, & Liaw, 1995; Evans & English, 2002; Rutter, 1981). Particularly detrimental to children's academic competence is economic hardship that occurs during early childhood, as economic gaps in early academic This content downloaded from 129.219.247.33 on Wed, 17 Jan 2018 04:20:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Full- Versus Part-Day Kindergarten 959 achievement tend to continue and to exacerbate in middle childhood (Alexander, Entwisle, & Dauber, kindergarten year when compared to part-day kin Olson, 1997; Votruba-Drzal, 2006). vantage of attending part-day kindergarten was greatly diminished by first grade and completely dergarten enrollment. After the kindergarten year, 1993; Duncan & Brooks-Gunn, 1997; Duncan, Brooks however, part-day kindergarten children caught up to Gunn, Yeung, & Smith, 1998; Entwisle, Alexander, & their full-day kindergarten counterparts. The disad Beyond the home environment, child-care settings have become increasingly important contexts for children's development, as women have entered the eliminated by the spring of third grade. Much of the literature examining associations labor force in higher numbers. Several characteristics of child-care settings have been linked to the devel between kindergarten program type and academic ments play in shaping children's development, these out-of-school contexts have been left largely unexam ined in studies of full- versus part-day kindergarten. ized change models) taken before and after exposure achievement has been limited to two repeated assess ments and has, therefore, not been able to account for opment of children's academic skills over time, including the number of hours per week children the variability in children's growth in academic are in care (Bogenschneider & Steinberg, 1994; Bro achievement when comparing the achievement out berg, Wessels, Lamb, & Hwang, 1997; Brooks-Gunn, comes of part-day kindergarteners to full-day kinder garteners. Furthermore, a focus on two repeated Han, & Waldfogel, 2002; Field, 1991; Harvey, 1999; NICHD, 2000; Votruba-Drzal, Coley, & Chase assessments cannot adequately capture the shape of Lansdale, 2004) and the type of care that children children's academic trajectories. In short, research in experience, with center-based care being linked to this area has conceived of child development as better academic performance than home-based set occurring uniformly and incrementally across chil tings and parental care (Broberg et al., 1997; Caughy, dren. Indeed, nearly all studies of kindergarten pro DiPietro, & Strobino, 1994). gram type have relied on the analysis of two waves of achievement scores (e.g., change models or residual Despite the roles home and child-care environ This may be especially problematic in regard to studying kindergarten program type because part day kindergarteners likely spend the majority of their time in home and child-care settings. If children's experiences outside school are related to their aca demic skills and their parents' selection of kindergar ten, then the failure to take these important contexts into account when considering the effects of full versus part-day kindergarten may produce mislead ing results. Mapping trajectories of achievement. A central con cept in developmental science is the notion that children's development is characterized by unique to full- versus part-day kindergarten to identify associations between children's full- versus part-day kindergarten attendance and academic achievement. In doing so, studies have conceptualized full- versus part-day kindergarten's effects on children's devel opment as providing incremental gains to achieve ment that are accrued between the beginning and the end of the kindergarten year and have not been able to provide detailed information about when the advan tages of full-day kindergarten attendance subside. Though the analysis of change scores has benefits for reducing potential sources of bias (Allison, 1990; Willett, 1988), they are characterized by significant limitations that have been reviewed extensively in the literature (Rogosa, Brandt, & Zimowski, 1982; Singer trajectories, with some children developing at faster & Willett, 2003; Willett, 1988). Among the most of existing studies that have followed children not recognize two central concepts in developmental science: that child development is heterogeneous and rates than others across time (National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2000). A handful beyond kindergarten suggest that although there are initial benefits to full-day kindergarten, these advan tages do not persist after the early years of elementary school. These studies show that the academic disad vantages of part-day kindergarten fade out sometime between first and third grade (Karweit, 1987; Ohio State Legislative Office of Education, 1997; Weiss & Offenberg, 2002). For example, in a recent study using nationally representative data and rigorous analytic techniques, Cannon et al. (2006) found that full-day kindergarten participation was related to modestly higher reading and math scores at the end of the significant limitations are that these approaches do that patterns of child development are more accu rately portrayed by careful estimation of trajectories of individual growth rather than by simple change scores. Over the past 20 years, there has been a reorienta tion in developmental research from what Willet (1988) refers to as a focus on change to more nuance models of growth. Advances such as hierarchic linear modeling (HLM) have paved the way for more precise estimation of children's individual-specific growth trajectories (Burchinal & Appelbaum, 1991 Burchinal, Nelson, & Poe, 2006; Raudenbush & Bryk, This content downloaded from 129.219.247.33 on Wed, 17 Jan 2018 04:20:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 960 Votruba-Drzal, Li-Grining, and Maldonado-Carre?o 2002; Singer & Willett, 2003). These approaches to children entering kindergarten in the fall of 1998 measuring development, however, have not yet been applied to the question of whether full-day kinder using a multistage probability sample design, where the primary sampling units (PSU) were geographic areas consisting of counties or groups of counties, the garten has meaningful implications for children's achievement trajectories. Nevertheless, these meth ods are an integral part of a developmental perspec tive because they recognize the heterogeneous nature of development. Here, we specifically use HLM to determine whether full-day kindergarten enrollment is related to steeper growth in individual-specific achievement trajectories during the kindergarten year and to gain a more precise estimation of the duration of the full-day kindergarten advantage. second-stage sampling units were schools within PSUs, and the final stage sampling units were stu dents within schools. In total, nearly 22,000 kinder garteners throughout the United States participated in the study in the fall of 1998. The ECLS - K collected base-year data in the fall of kindergarten in 1998 and the spring of kindergarten in 1999. Four waves of data have been collected beyond the kindergarten year. These have taken place in the fall and spring of first grade, the spring of third grade, and the spring of fifth Research Goals Individual differences in children's achievement trajectories, across the kindergarten year and beyond, stem from a unique constellation of child, school, home, and child-care characteristics (National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2000; Pianta, Rimm-Kaufman, & Cox, 1999). Guided by a developmental approach that highlights this het erogeneity and contextual embeddedness of child ren's lives, the aim of this study was to examine whether kindergarten program type explains indi vidual differences in children's academic trajectories from kindergarten through fifth grade, net of salient aspects of children's home and child-care experi ences. This study begins by providing a rich descrip tion and comparison of children attending full- and part-day kindergarten. Next, it considers whether full-day, as opposed to part-day, kindergarten atten dance is linked with greater initial growth of reading and math skills during the kindergarten year after taking into account the influences of important char acteristics of children's home and child-care settings. It then considers how long these benefits are sus tained by examining trajectories of student achieve ment from the spring of kindergarten through the end of fifth grade. Method grade. The ECLS - K planned to collect data from all children at each wave of the study, with the exception of the fall of first grade, when data were collected only from a representative 30% of the entire sample of schools. Each school year of the survey information was collected from parents, teachers, and school administrators. Parent interviews were conducted by telephone or in person for families without a tele phone, and teachers and school administrators were surveyed through self-administered questionnaires. The data were collected across several domains and include multimethod, multisource, in-school assess ments of children's cognitive development as well as measures of family, school, and classroom charac teristics that have been associated with children's development. Sample The sample that was used in this study consists of first-time kindergarteners who remained in the same type of kindergarten program (full or part day) throughout the kindergarten year, who were in kin dergarten for at least 4 days per week, and who had at least one valid observation in reading and in math from kindergarten through fifth grade. Only children who had a valid sampling weight (C1PW0) were included in the sample. Altogether, 13,776 children were included in our sample. This represents 78% of the entire sample of children for whom ECLS-K recali brated the item response theory score (IRT) assess The data for this study come from the Early Child hood Longitudinal Study - Kindergarten Class of ment scores from kindergarten through fifth grade. cohort of children (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2001). The dren who repeated kindergarten (n = 675), those who switched program type (n = 240), those who were not in kindergarten for at least 4 days per week (n = 389), 1998-1999 (ECLS-K), a nationally representative ECLS-K was designed to study relations among children's developmental trajectories and their fam ily, preschool, and school experiences. The sample was selected to be nationally representative of all The number of children dropped from our sample because of our exclusion criteria are as follows: chil those who did not have a valid math or reading assessment (n = 79), and those with a sampling weight of 0 or missing weight (n = 2,501). This content downloaded from 129.219.247.33 on Wed, 17 Jan 2018 04:20:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Full- Versus Part-Day Kindergarten 961 Of the 13,776 children included in the sample, 64% and 68% had valid reading and math scores, respec tively, for five or six waves of data from the fall of kindergarten through the spring of fifth grade, and 31% and 29% had valid reading and math scores, respectively, for three or four waves of data. An extensive set of 17 covariates are included in our analyses that reflect important characteristics of chil dren and their in-school and out-of-school contexts. Of the 13,776 children in our sample, 87% had valid 1989; Woodcock & Mather, 1989, 1990). Both direct cognitive batteries have been shown to have good internal consistency. The reading assessment tests a broad range of children's language and literacy skills, including letter recognition, receptive vocabu lary, and reading comprehension. Items on the math ematics assessment are aimed at measuring general mathematical skills, with questions on topics such as number sense, properties, measurement, and spatial sense. data on all the 17 covariates. Statistical comparisons of An important prerequisite for growth modeling to have an outcome variable measured on a consiste important covariates showed that they were more disadvantaged across several dimensions. For exam metric over time (Singer & Willett, 2003). To facilit longitudinal analyses of children's academic achie children who had missing child assessments or ple, they were more likely to be of an ethnic minority background, scored slightly lower on academic skills, and their parents tended to be less educated and to have incomes at or below the poverty line. Traditional approaches to handling missing data, ment, the ECLS-K calculated IRT scores, whi estimate children's performance as if they had bee administered the whole set of assessment questions The first set of IRT scores were created for childre such as listwise deletion or mean imputation, have participating in the kindergarten and first-gra rounds of data collection. As children aged and t been criticized for biasing estimates, misrepresenting statistical power, and leading to invalid conclusions assessments were expanded in third and fifth grad the ECLS - K recalibrated the IRT scores from all pri (Acock, 2005; Rubin, 1987; Widaman, 2006). There fore, missing data were imputed for the present study using multiple imputation by chained equations (ICE), which was implemented in Stata (Royston, 2004). Multiple imputation was performed in Stata to create five complete data sets that included both the independent and the dependent variables in our models. The primary analysis for this study was performed using HLM 6.04 (Raudenbush, Bryk, Cheong, Congdon, & du Toit, 2004). Following impu tation, the five data sets were imported into HLM, which was then used to conduct separate analysis for each set of plausible values. Based on the relative efficiency calculation by Rubin (1987), five multiple imputations were deemed sufficient. Parameter esti mates were averaged and standard errors were com puted in HLM 6.04 using standard techniques described by Raudenbush et al. Measures Academic achievement. Academic achievement in math and reading was measured in school using individualized, direct cognitive assessments de signed by the ECLS - K. Several items on the assess ment were adapted from existing instruments that have been shown to be reliable and valid measures of children's cognitive and academic development, such as the Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Bat tery, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, and the Peabody Individual Achievement Test (Dunn & Dunn, 1981; Dunn & Markwardt, 1970; Markwardt, waves of data to make longitudinal compariso possible (U.S. Department of Education, Nationa Center for Education Statistics, 2005). Here, we u the recalibrated fifth-grade IRT scores, which is keeping with prior studies of academic growth usin the ECLS-K (e.g., Kaplan, 2002; McCoach, O'C nell, Reis, & Levitt, 2006; Ready, LoGerfo, Burkam, Lee, 2005). Kindergarten and school experiences. The primary independent variable of interest in these analyses i kindergarten program type, which is represent with a dichotomous indicator for whether childr were enrolled in part- versus full-day kindergarten Reports of children's kindergarten program ty were obtained during interviews with kindergart teachers. A teacher-reported indicator of wheth a child changed teachers during the kindergart year was included as well. Several basic scho demographic characteristics were also included these analyses, including school type, region, a urbanicity. School type was coded with a dumm variable that indicated whether children attend private versus public schools. The school's ge graphic location was modeled with dummy variable indicating whether the child lived in the Northeast (omitted from the model as the comparison group) Midwest, South, or West. Finally, schools' urbanic was represented with variables indicating wheth the schools were located in suburbs/large town (omitted), central cities, or small towns /rural areas Out-of-school contexts. This investigation focused on four dimensions of out-of-school contexts: quali This content downloaded from 129.219.247.33 on Wed, 17 Jan 2018 04:20:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 962 Votruba-Drzal, Li-Grining, and Maldonado-Carre?o of cognitive stimulation in the home, household poverty, and type and extent of child care. First, parents were asked about several different types of learning activities that took place in children's home environments during a typical week. Items were adapted from reliable measures of children's home learning environments that have been widely used and validated in the literature, such as the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment a vocational or technical program, bachelor's degree, and advanced degree. Maternal age at first birth was measured in years, and the number of children younger than 18 years living in the household was used as an estimate of parents' household caretaking responsibilities. Parental marital status was repre sented with dummy variables indicating whether parents were married (omitted), never married, sep arated/divorced, or widowed. Dummy variables (HOME) Inventory (Caldwell & Bradley, 1979). For were also included for children who lived with non most items, parents rated the frequency with which children engaged in particular learning activities, such as reading books, singing songs, and listening to music, on a 4-point scale (1 = not at all and 4 = 3 to 6 times a week). Dimensions of children's home learning biological or adoptive parents, and for whether a non English language was the primary language spoken at home. Finally, children's individual characteristics were obtained during parent interviews in kindergarten. Gender was represented with a dummy variable, and the age at which children started kindergarten was environments that were measured by these items include the level of academic guidance and support provided to children; the degree to which children measured in months. Child race/ethnicity was rep engaged in new activities and explored and discussed new ideas; and the amount of language stimulation children experienced. Factor analyses were per formed to create a composite measure, which was calculated by taking a mean of 24 items asked in the fall and spring of kindergarten (oc = .80). Second, family economic resources were represented with a dummy variable indicating whether or not children lived in households with incomes below the poverty line during kindergarten. The third and fourth aspects of out-of-school con texts were type and extent of child care, which were measured during kindergarten and during the year resented with a series of dummy variables reflecting whether children were of a Hispanic, non-Hispanic Black, non-Hispanic White (omitted), non-Hispanic Asian, non-Hispanic Native American, or multiethnic background. An indicator of low birth weight was used to represent whether children weighed less than 5.5 pounds at birth. Analytic Approach Setting the stage for this investigation, we first sought to depict a national descriptive portrait of children attending full- versus part-day kindergarten. prior to kindergarten. Prekindergarten type of care To test whether there were significant differences between these two groups of children, no constant (omitted), Head Start, other center care, relative care, nonrelative care, or multiple types of care. Type of dummy indicator for kindergarten program type as Family and child characteristics. Several family and individual characteristics that are important for child garten program type in the proportion of individuals falling into each particular category. This descriptive analysis was performed in Stata, with Huber - White standard error corrections (Huber, 1967) to take into account the nesting of children within schools, and sampling weights were applied. was represented categorically by dummy variables indicating whether children were in parental care regression analyses were performed, with the the only independent variable, and achievement care during kindergarten was modeled categorically measures, family and child characteristics, and school by dummy variables reflecting whether children were demographic characteristics as dependent variables. in parental care (omitted), center care, relative care, When testing for differences in family and child nonrelative care, or multiple types of care. The characteristics that were represented categorically average hours per week of care during kindergarten (e.g., race, parental education), each category was and the year prior to kindergarten were each repre tested as a separate dependent variable to determine sented continuously. whether there were significant differences by kinder ren's developmental trajectories were included in these analyses to further test the robustness of the linkage between kindergarten program type and children's academic trajectories. All these measures were obtained during parental interviews in kinder garten. Parental education was represented categori cally as the highest level of education attained by either parent. Categories include less than a high school diploma (omitted), a high school diploma, Next, to examine whether there were initial and long-term benefits to attending full-day kindergarten, we estimated three-level models (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002) in HLM 6.04 using full information maxi mum likelihood estimation and sampling weights This content downloaded from 129.219.247.33 on Wed, 17 Jan 2018 04:20:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Full- Versus Part-Day Kindergarten 963 (Raudenbush et al., 2004). At Level 1 were children's estimated to explain the heterogeneity in trajectories achievement scores, which were nested within indi of academic achievement. vidual children at Level 2, who were nested within Equations 2 through 4 were used at Level 2 to schools at Level 3. Children's academic trajectories model variability in the Level 1 parameters: were estimated using piece wise growth models. To nOi = ?oo/ + ?oi/KTi/ + ?o2/FTzy + ?03;Qy + ?04yFzy consider whether full-day kindergarten was initially beneficial to the growth of children's academic skills + ?05;CCPKzy + ?oo/CCIQy (2) during the kindergarten year, the first trajectory measured growth from the fall of kindergarten to *H; = ?lO; + ?ll;KTiy + ?12;FTzy + ?^Qy + ?14;-F/y the spring of kindergarten. To examine how long + ?15/CCK// + r1// (3) these initial benefits to achievement growth were sustained, the second trajectory measured growth from the spring of kindergarten to the spring of fifth grade. The form of the Level 1 equation can be seen in Equation 1: Ytij = noij + 7ii/;Time ltij + 7C2lyTime2iy + efzy. (1) We created Time 1 and Time 2 to track growth across kindergarten and from the spring of kinder garten through the spring of fifth grade, respectively. The time of each assessment was measured as the number of months that had passed since September 1,1998, because the exact start of the school year was not available in the public release data. There was great variability in the month in which each of the K2ij = ?20; + ?21;KT(/ + p22;FTz7 + ?23/Ci; + ?24;^ + ^;. (4) Here, the initial level of academic achievement was modeled as a function of kindergarten program type (KTy), and a series of child (Qy), family (Fz;), pre kindergarten child care (CCPKzy), and kindergarten child-care (CCKzy) characteristics. The time of the child assessment at the fall of kindergarten (FTzy) was included as a predictor as well because children who were assessed later in the school year tended to have more advanced academic skills than did those assessments took place; for example, the fall of kindergarten assessments took place between Sep who were assessed earlier. All independent variables in the Level 2 equation for the intercept were mea sured in kindergarten. The two slope parameters ment, and the Time 2 variable was centered at the independent variables, with the exception that only child-care characteristics in kindergarten were used to predict the kindergarten slope. Also, no child-care characteristics were used to model variability in the coefficient on Time 2 because child-care experiences tember and December. Therefore, the exact number of months that had passed at the time of the assess ment was used to yield greater precision in estimat ing the growth trajectories. The Time 1 variable was centered at the time of the fall kindergarten assess time of the assessment at the spring of kindergarten. Thus, academic achievement at time t for child / in school j was modeled as a function of the academic achievement of child i in school ; at the fall of kindergarten (7i0zy), his or her per month growth of achievement skills during the kindergarten year (itiij), and his or her monthly growth rate from the spring of kindergarten until the spring of fifth grade fey). We began our growth trajectory analyses by estimating unconditional growth models, with the coefficients on the slopes in the Level 1 equation estimated as random. The Level 1 intercept and Level 2 intercept predicting the Level 1 intercept were fixed due to model convergence problems (Dearing et al., 2001). The remaining intercepts of the Level 2 equations were estimated as random, and the slope coefficients of the Level 2 equations were fixed at Level 3. After finding significant variability in the Level 1 and Level 2 parameters, conditional models were were estimated as a function of this same set of are less relevant in predicting achievement growth after children are in school full time. Except for the indicator for kindergarten program type (KT^), which was coded as 1 for part-day programs and 0 for full day programs, all independent variables at Level 2 were centered on the grand mean for the sample, so that the intercepts at Level 2 represent adjusted means for the average study participant in full-day kinder garten (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). At Level 3, we introduced a set of school-level demographic characteristics. Equations 5 through 7 were used to predict the Level 2 intercepts: ?ooy = Tooo + YooiST; + Yoo2#; + Yoos^; (5) ?ioy = Yioo + YioiST; + Yi02^; + Ji03Uj + uioj (6) ?20; = ?200 + 7201 ST/ + y202Rj + 7203^/ + u20j- (7) Specifically, school type (ST), geographical region (R), and urbanicity (Li) were used to model the This content downloaded from 129.219.247.33 on Wed, 17 Jan 2018 04:20:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 964 Votruba-Drzal, Li-Grining, and Maldonado-Carre?o intercepts of the Level 2 equations. However, the Level 2 slope coefficients were fixed at Level 3 and did not include any predictors because we had no a priori hypotheses about how school characteristics would moderate the influence of the Level 2 indepen dent variables. The conditional growth models were built in three steps. In the first model, academic growth trajectories at Level 1 were estimated as a function of whether children attended part-day kindergarten at Level 2. In the second model, important characteristics of child ren's out-of-school contexts were taken into account, with quality of cognitive stimulation in the home, household poverty status, and type and extent of child care added as covariates at Level 2. In the third and final model, other family and child characteristics were included at Level 2 and school characteristics added at Level 3 as an additional test of the robustness of the association between kindergarten program type and children's achievement trajectories. Results Are There Significant Differences Between Children Attending Full- Versus Part-Day Kindergarten? garten. Children attending part-day kindergarten programs spent more hours in child care, had a higher likelihood of receiving nonrelative home-based child care, and had a lower likelihood of receiving relative home-based child care. In contrast, during the year prior to kindergarten, children in part- and full-day kindergarten had somewhat similar child-care expe riences. However, part-day kindergarteners spent about 6 hr less in nonparental care per week, were less likely to have attended Head Start, and more likely to be cared for in a nonrelative home-based child-care setting, when compared to full-day kinder garten students. In addition to contextual differences, children enrolled in part- versus full-day programs varied in terms of their individual characteristics. The most notable of these differences was in the racial compo sition of the two groups of children. More specifically, a greater proportion of children in part-day kinder garten were of Hispanic, non-Hispanic White, Asian, and multiracial backgrounds, and a smaller propor tion were of non-Hispanic Black and Native American race/ethnicity, in comparison to full-day kindergar teners. These differences were moderate to large in magnitude. For example, 7% of part-day kindergar teners were of non-Hispanic Black ethnicity, whereas 22% of full-day kindergarteners fell into this category. Laying the groundwork for our multivariate anal yses, we first consider whether significant differences exist between students enrolled in part- and full-day kindergarten. Descriptive information for the sample Children in part-day kindergarten entered school when they were slightly younger and less likely to the top row, 45% (n = 6,202) of children were enrolled in part-day kindergarten and 55% (n = 7,57A) in full achievement at the fall of kindergarten did not differ significantly By the spring of kindergarten, the math skills of the two groups of children were statistically indistinguishable. Still, children in full-day kinder garten outscored their part-day kindergarten counter as a whole as well as for subgroups of children by program type can be found in Table 1. As shown in day kindergarten. Regarding family and household characteristics, the poverty rate among part-day kindergarten stu dents was 6% lower than that for full-day kindergar ten students. Among part-day kindergarten students, the highest level of parental education was slightly greater, the proportion of children from married parent households was higher, and the percentage of children from households with parents who had never been married was lower. Not surprisingly, based on these socioeconomic differences, the quality of cognitive stimulation in the home environments of part-day kindergarten students was about one tenth of 1 SD higher than that of their peers. A greater percentage of children in part-day kindergarten (14%) versus full-day kindergarten (9.8%) came from a non-English-speaking household. Moving on to child care, part- and full-day kinder garteners had different experiences during kinder have been of low birth weight compared to children in full-day kindergarten. There were no significant dif ferences in child gender by program type. Furthermore, children's mean levels of academic parts in reading by one tenth of 1 SD. By the fall of first grade, children's achievement did not vary across program type and remained similar, until the spring of third grade, when part-day kindergarteners out scored full-day kindergarteners on the math and reading skills measures by one tenth of 1 SD. This disparity grew slightly in the spring of fifth grade. Finally, there were several significant differences in school characteristics by kindergarten program type. For example, a greater proportion of children in full-day kindergarten (54.7%) versus part-day kindergarten (14.1%) attended schools located in the South, whereas a lower proportion of full-day kindergarteners attended schools located in the West, Northeast, and Midwest. Full-day kindergarteners also had somewhat higher rates of private versus This content downloaded from 129.219.247.33 on Wed, 17 Jan 2018 04:20:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Full- Versus Part-Day Kindergarten 965 Table 1 Descriptive Statistics by Kindergarten Program Type Part-day kindergarten students (n = 6,202), Full-day kindergarten students (n = 7,574), M or % (SE) M or % (SE) 50.4% (50.0) 51.4% (0.7) 50.4% (0.6) 57.8% (49.4) 14.0% (34.7) 16.9% (37.5) 5.5% (22.7) 3.0% (17.2) 2.8% (16.5) 7.0% (25.6) 63.4% 1.8) 3.5% 0.4) 1.4% 0.2) 3.0% 0.3) 6.3% 0.4) 54.0% (1.8) 22.3% (1.6) 15.7% (1.2) 2.6% (0.3) 3.4% (0.7) 2.1% (0.2) 7.9% (0.4) 5.2% (22.3) 5.0% 0.7) 5.9% (0.6) Full sample3 (N = 13,776), M or % (SD) Characteristics Child characteristics Male Race Non-Hispanic White*** African American*** Hispanic** Non-Hispanic Asian* Native American** Multiracial** Low birth weight** Age of entry*** Changed teacher during kindergarten Family and household characteristics at kindergarten Below poverty level*** 65.4 0.1) 19.3% (39.4) 16.8% 1.0) 24.1 0.2) 23.2% (1.1) 9.3% ;o.8) 10.2% (0.6) 29.3% (0.9) 32.0% (0.8) 18.2% (0.8) 10.2% (0.8) 24.0 (5.5) Highest parental education Less than high school High school degree*** Vocational/technical program Bachelor's degree** Advanced degree Marital status 9.0% (28.6) 25.4% (43.5) 32.6% (46.9) 21.1% (40.8) 11.9% (32.4) Divorced/separated* Widowed Never married*** Adoptive/no biological dad*** Non-English home language** Number of children in household Home learning environment** Child-care characteristics at prekindergarten Hours of care per week*** Parental care Head Start*** Center care Relative home-based care Nonrelative home-based care*** Multiple types of care Child-care characteristics at kindergarten Hours of care per week*** Parental care** Center care Relative home-based care** Nonrelative home-based care*** Multiple types of care Kindergarten characteristics Region Midwest** Northeast* West*** 21.9%1.6) 65.8 (4.1) Maternal age at first birth (years)** Married*** 6.9% ;o.8) 71.1% (45.4) 13.0% (33.6) 0.8% (9.0) 12.9% (33.5) 2.3% (14.9) 12.7% (33.3) 2.5 (1.2) 0.0 (0.4) 25.4 (21.7) 18.1% (38.5) 9.1% (28.8) 43.8% (49.6) 13.9% (34.6) 10.1% (30.1) 5.0% (21.9) 23.9%0.9) 33.5%;0.9) 21.4% ;o.9) 11.9%:o.9) 73.8%1.0) 12.7%:o.6) 0.7% 0.1) 11.2%0.7) 1.6% 0.2) 14.3%1.2) 66.1 (0.1) 23.3 (0.2) 66.0% (1.2) 14.1% (0.5) 1.0% (0.1) 15.7% (0.9) 3.2% (0.3) 9.8% (0.8) ;o.o) 2.5 (0.0) 0.0 (0.0) 22.3 0.4) 19.0% 0.7) 7.4% 0.7) 28.3 (0.4) 2.5 0.0 0.0) 12.4% 0.5) 5.1% 0.3) 17.7% (0.7) 12.2% (0.9) 43.3% (1.1) 13.4% (0.5) 8.2% (0.5) 5.2% (0.3) 51.9% (50.0) 17.3% (37.8) 18.7% (39.0) 10.0% (30.0) 2.1% (14.2) 11.4 0.3) 50.0% 0.9) 17.4% 0.9) 17.0% 0.7) 13.5% 0.6) 2.1%0.2) 53.3% (0.8) 16.7% (0.8) 20.4% (0.7) 7.6% (0.4) 2.0% (0.2) 25.6% (43.6) 18.6% (38.9) 22.7% (41.9) 21.1% 2.2) 35.6% 2.6) 9.3 (13.8) 41.7%1.2) 14.5%0.6) 29.2%2.4) 7.9 (0.2) 19.5% (1.9) 15.3% (1.8) 10.5% (1.4) (Continued) This content downloaded from 129.219.247.33 on Wed, 17 Jan 2018 04:20:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 966 Votruba-Drzal, Li-Grining, and Maldonado-Carre?o Table 1 Continued Part-day kindergarten students (n = 6,202), Full-day kindergarten students (n = 7,574), M or % (SE) M or % (SE) 33.2% (47.1) 20.6% (40.4) 14.1% (1.9) 10.5% (1.4) 54.7% (2.5) 17.0% (1.7) 40.8% (49.2) 20.8% (40.6) 38.5% (48.7) 40.0% (2.4) 18.7% (2.0) 41.3% (2.4) 39.1% (2.2) 22.7% (2.1) 38.2% (2.3) 29.3 40.1 29.4 41.5 48.4 71.3 (0.3) (0.4) (0.9) (0.6) 22.6 33.4 40.2 57.2 90.4 (0.2) (0.3) (0.6) (0.5) (0.6) Full sample3 (N - 13,776), M or % (SD) Characteristics South*** Private school** Urbanicity Central city Rural Large town Child outcomes Reading 29.7 41.4 48.6 72.4 118.4 139.5 Fall of kindergarten Spring of kindergarten** Fall of first grade Spring of first grade Spring of third grade* Spring of fifth grade** Math Fall of kindergarten Spring of kindergarten Fall of first grade Spring of first grade Spring of third grade** Spring fifth grade*** 23.1 33.6 40.6 58.0 92.1 (10.1) (13.8) (17.9) (22.4) (25.0) (23.2) (8.9) (11.6) (13.8) (16.8) (21.5) 113.5 (21.4) (0.2) (0.3) 46.9 (0.7) 71.6 (0.6) 118.8 (0.8) 140.1 (0.9) 22.8 32.7 39.6 (0.2) (0.3) (0.7) 57.6 (0.4) 92.8 (0.6) 114.6 (0.8) 116.2 (0.9) 137.3 (1.1) 111.2 (0.9) Note. Significance levels reflect the statistical significance of differences between students in part- and full-day kindergarten. aDescriptive statistics for the full-sample are unweighted. Tp < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. public school enrollment when compared to part-day kindergartener students. In sum, several differences emerged between children attending full- and part day kindergarten; however, when differences were detected, they tended to be modest in magnitude. Does Attending Full-Day Kindergarten Yield Benefits to Children's Academic Achievement? Moving on to our analyses of children's academic trajectories, we estimated math and reading trajecto ries from the fall of kindergarten until the spring of fifth grade, in order to address the question of whether full-day kindergarten attendance explained variability in children's development. We began by estimating unconditional growth models, which are given in Table 2. Here, it can be seen that the math and reading scores for the average child in the sample at the fall of kindergarten were 23.155 and 29.372, respectively. Examining the coefficients on the two slope terms, it can be seen that the slopes of children's achievement trajectories were somewhat steeper between the fall and the spring of kindergarten, compared to the slopes of trajectories between the spring of kindergarten and fifth grade. The two slope terms in the unconditional growth models were correlated .80 for math and .66 for reading. Chi-square tests revealed that there was significant variability between individuals' achievement trajectories. Given that children were heterogeneous in their academic trajectories, we next estimated conditional models of student achievement trajectories from the fall of kindergarten to the spring of fifth grade, with results for math displayed in Table 3 and findings for reading shown in Table 4. In Model 1 of Tables 3 and 4, an indicator of part-day kindergarten was used to predict the intercepts and slopes of children's achievement trajectories. Consistent with the descrip tive analysis, there were no significant differences related to kindergarten program type at the fall of kindergarten, as indicated in Panel A. However, as shown in Panel B, the coefficients on the part-day indicator for the first slope in the piecewise growth models show that from fall to spring of the kinder garten year, the math and reading skills trajectories of children in part-day kindergarten were characterized by slightly slower rates of growth. More specifically, the math and reading skills of the average child in This content downloaded from 129.219.247.33 on Wed, 17 Jan 2018 04:20:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Full- Versus Part-Day Kindergarten 967 Table 2 Kindergarten Program Type and Academic Trajectories From Fall of Kindergarten Through Spring of Fifth Grade Reading Math Coefficient SE Coefficient SE Intercept Intercept 29.372*** 0.181 23.155*** 0.170 Time Ia Intercept 2.803*** 0.033 2.329*** 0.042 Time 2b Intercept 1.672*** 0.013 1.339*** 0.014 aRate of change during the kindergarten year. bRate of change from the spring of kindergarten until the spring of fifth grade. 24 ***p < .001. 48 Time (Months) part-day kindergarten grew by 2.189 and 2.632 per month, respectively, whereas the respective growth rates for full-day kindergarteners were 2.435 and 2.930. By the end of the kindergarten year, children in full-day kindergarten outscored part-day kinder garteners by one fifth of 1 SD in math and reading. To consider whether the benefits of full-day kin dergarten are sustained through the spring of fifth grade, we examined the coefficients on the second slope term in our piecewise growth models, which are found in Panel C of Model 1 of Tables 3 and 4. These suggest that the initial benefits of full-day kindergar ten for the growth of achievement trajectories were not sustained beyond the kindergarten year. Indeed, the positive and significant coefficients on the part day indicators for the second slope coefficients sug gest that from the spring of kindergarten through fifth grade, the academic skills of children in part-day kindergarten grew at a slightly faster rate than did those of children in full-day kindergarten. Figure 1 illustrates the reading growth curve trajectories of children by kindergarten program type from the fall of kindergarten through the spring of third grade based on this first conditional model. The plot of children's math skills looks nearly identical. Here, it can be seen that although full-day kindergarten was associated with a small academic advantage across the kindergarten year, the achievement trajectories of children in part- and full-day kindergarten converge soon after children leave kindergarten. Indeed, Fig ure 1 shows that the advantage of full- versus part day kindergarten has faded out by the spring of third grade, with the two groups diverging and the part day kindergarteners pulling ahead. Though not shown here for parsimony, the divergence continues into the spring of fifth grade. Figure 1. Kindergarten program type and reading achievement trajectories from fall of kindergarten to spring of third grade. In Model 2 of Tables 3 and 4, measures of children's out-of-school contexts were introduced, including the quality of cognitive stimulation in the home environ ment, household poverty status, and the type and extent of nonparental care during kindergarten and the year before kindergarten entry. These factors were significantly related to children's achievement in the fall of kindergarten. More specifically, children who experienced high-quality home environments and nonparental care in the year before kindergarten (with the exception of Head Start enrollment), and those from nonpoor households tended to start school with higher levels of reading and math skills. The intro duction of these variables as predictors of the inter cept revealed a significant difference in achievement between children in part- and full-day kindergarten that favored full-day kindergarten students, though this association was only marginally significant for math achievement. The inclusion of this important set of variables as predictors of the kindergarten slope term resulted in a 26% and 19% reduction in the association between kindergarten program type and children's math and reading skills trajectories, respectively, during the kindergarten year, highlighting the importance of these contexts for children's development. Together, cognitive stimulation in the home environment and the poverty status of the child's household were responsible for a modest decrease in the magnitude of the part-day coefficient. More specifically, the math and reading skills of children from impoverished households grew at slower rates than did those of children in households above the federal poverty This content downloaded from 129.219.247.33 on Wed, 17 Jan 2018 04:20:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 968 Votruba-Drzal, Li-Grining, and Maldonado-Carre?o Table 3 Kindergarten Program Type and Math Trajectories From Fall of Kindergarten to Spring of Fifth Grade Model 1 Coefficient Panel A. Intercept Model 3 Model 2 SE Coefficient SE Coefficient SE 0.174 0.246 0.203 0.245 23.553*** -0.706** -0.885*** 2.165*** 0.147 0.203 0.195 0.198 0.371 0.295 0.380 0.428 0.498 0.008 0.278 0.290 0.360 0.559 -0.421 1.676*** 0.361 1.106** 0.782f -0.001 -0.075 -0.330 0.144 -0.054 0.564*** -0.811* 0.054 0.345 0.266 0.355 0.406 0.008 0.247 0.253 0.318 0.483 0.022 0.339 0.142 Hispanic -1.870*** -1.800*** 0.228 0.264 Non-Hispanic Asian Native American -2.801*** Intercept 22.987*** 0.240 23.241*** Part day 0.358 0.319 -0.416* -3.604*** 3.997*** Poverty Home learning environment Hours per week in child care3 -0.012* -1.196** Head Start3 Center care3 3.365*** 0.965* Relative home-based care3 Nonrelative home-based care3 2.857*** 1.934*** Multiple types of care3 Hours per week in child careb -0.015f 0.392 Center careb Relative home-based careb Nonrelative home-based careb -0.980* 0.489 -0.064 Multiple types of careb Age of entry Changed teacher during kindergarten 0.005 Male Race African American 0.000 1.773** Multiracial Low birth weight Maternal age at first birth (years) Highest parental education High school degree Vocational/technical program Bachelor's degree Advanced degree Marital status Divorced / separated Widowed Adoptive/no biological dad Non-English home language Number of children in household Midwest West South Central city Rural 0.506 1.006* 1.796*** 0.142*** 0.917** 2.061*** 3.944*** 5.871*** 0.269 0.281 0.333 0.398 -0.642** -1.047 0.209 0.732 -0.752* -0.259*** 0.184 0.895** 0.420 0.323 0.067 0.285 0.306 0.049 Private 0.459 0.453 0.434 0.239 0.019 -0.536* -1.501** Never married 0.005 0.233 0.295 1.434*** -0.261 ?1 222*** 0.296 0.210 0.230 2.483*** -0.153** 0.042 0.047 0.039 0.032 Panel B. Time Ie Intercept 2.435*** 0.048 Part day -0.246*** 0.060 Poverty Home learning environment 2.461 -0.183*** -0.072f 0.112** 0.045 0.048 0.037 0.038 This content downloaded from 129.219.247.33 on Wed, 17 Jan 2018 04:20:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms -0.077* 0.106** Full- Versus Part-Day Kindergarten 969 Table 3 Continued Model 2 Model 1 Coefficient SE Coefficient -0.001 Hours per week in child careb Center careb Relative home-based careb Nonrelative home-based careb -0.028 -0.006 0.057 0.071 Multiple types of careb Age of entry Changed teacher during kindergarten Model 3 SE Coefficient SE 0.001 0.044 0.040 0.053 0.091 -0.000 -0.015 -0.035 0.062 0.017 0.027*** -0.101 0.001 0.041 0.039 0.050 0.090 0.003 0.120 0.072** 0.025 Male Race African American -0.447*** -0.132** -0.112 -0.087 -0.191* Hispanic Non-Hispanic Asian Native American Multiracial 0.046 0.048 0.073 Maternal age at first birth (years) 0.002 0.079 0.079 0.047 0.003 Highest parental education High school degree Vocational /technical program Bachelor's degree Advanced degree Marital status 0.075 0.201*** 0.280*** 0.414*** 0.048 0.052 0.062 0.071 -0.120* Low birth weight Midwest -0.013 0.026 -0.074 -0.097 -0.068 -0.002 0.252*** South Private 0.324*** -0.015 Divorced / separated Widowed Never married Adoptive/no biological dad Non-English home language Number of children in household 0.148* West -0.048 Central city Rural Panel C Time 2d -0.111* 1.310*** 0.065*** Intercept Part day Poverty Home learning environment Age of entry Changed teacher during kindergarten 0.015 0.009 1.316*** 0.059*** -0.126*** 0.037* 0.014 0.008 0.009 0.012 Male Race African American Hispanic Non-Hispanic Asian Native American Multiracial Low birth weight Maternal age at first birth (years) 0.038 0.132 0.047 0.083 0.055 0.011 0.055 0.060 0.061 0.054 0.041 0.051 -0.004*** -0.031 0.061*** 0.014 0.008 0.009 0.011 0.001 0.020 0.007 -0.088*** -0.006 0.040** -0.052* -0.018 -0.028* 0.003** 0.012 0.011 0.015 0.021 0.021 0.012 0.001 1.328*** 0.038*** -0.067*** 0.007 (Continued) This content downloaded from 129.219.247.33 on Wed, 17 Jan 2018 04:20:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 970 Votruba-Drzal, Li-Grining, and Maldonado-Carre?o Table 3 Continued Coefficient Model 3 Model 2 Model 1 SE Coefficient SE Highest parental education High school degree Vocational/technical program Bachelor's degree Advanced degree Marital status Coefficient SE 0.039** 0.099*** 0.138*** 0.158*** 0.014 0.012 0.015 0.016 0.003 -0.016 -0.012 -0.006 0.003 -0.007* -0.024* -0.017 Divorced / separated Widowed Never married Adoptive/no biological dad Non-English home language Number of children in household Midwest West South -0.010 Private -0.041*** 0.005 -0.027* Central city Rural 0.011 0.037 0.013 0.023 0.013 0.003 0.011 0.013 0.013 0.010 0.009 0.012 3Child-care characteristics at prekindergarten. bChild-care characteristics at kindergarten. cRate of change during the kindergarten year. dRate of change from the spring of kindergarten until the spring of fifth grade. xp < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. threshold, whereas the achievement trajectories of children from more stimulating home environments increased at steeper rates during the kindergarten year. After taking these differences into account, the disadvantage of attending part-day kindergarten appeared modestly smaller. Contrary to our hypoth esis, kindergarten child-care characteristics did not emerge as significant predictors of achievement trajectories during the kindergarten year. The introduction of out-of-school contexts also slightly decreased the part-day kindergarten advan tage for children's achievement trajectories from the spring of kindergarten to the spring of fifth grade. Indeed, the coefficient on the part-day kindergarten indicator for the second slope of children's math and ipated that by the end of the kindergarten year, children in full-day kindergarten outscored part-day kinder garteners by 0.11 of 1 SD for math and 0.15 of 1 SD for reading, which is one half to one quarter of a reduction in the expected gain based on the first set of conditional models. In Model 3 of Tables 3 and 4, an extensive set of potentially confounding factors were added as pre dictors of children's achievement trajectories, with child and family characteristics added to the Level 2 equations and school characteristics added at Level 3. The introduction of this comprehensive set of control variables resulted in slight increases in the association between kindergarten program type and academic achievement at the fall of kindergarten. More impor reading trajectories fell by about 9% with the introduc tantly, however, it led to further reduction of the benefit tion of the additional measures into the analysis. Again, of full-day kindergarten for the growth of academic skills during kindergarten. Indeed, the part-day kin dergarten coefficients on the kindergarten slope terms in the prior conditional models decreased 16% and 8% for math and reading, respectively. The quality of cognitive stimulation in the home environment and family poverty status were responsible for this reduc tion. This suggests that the convergence of the achieve ment trajectories of children in part- and full-day kindergarten may in part be explained by the lower levels of poverty and the more stimulating home environments of children enrolled in part-day, as opposed to full-day kindergarten programs. Based on this second set of conditional models, it can be antic children's home environment and their household poverty status continued to be significantly associated with achievement trajectories during kindergarten, though the sizes of these coefficients dropped with the inclusion of the more comprehensive set of This content downloaded from 129.219.247.33 on Wed, 17 Jan 2018 04:20:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Full- Versus Part-Day Kindergarten 971 Table 4 Kindergarten Program Type and Reading Trajectories From Fall of Kindergarten to Spring of Fifth Grade Model 1 Coefficient Panel A. Intercept Model 2 SE Coefficient Intercept 29.455*** 0.259 29.714*** Part day -0.216 0.343-1.008* ?3.449*** Poverty 4.576*** Home learning environment Hours per week in child care3 -0.009 -1.568** Head Start3 3.758*** 1.047* 2.607*** Center care3 Relative home-based care3 Nonrelative home-based care3 2.155** Multiple types of care3 Hours per week in child careb -0.003 -0.061 Center careb Relative home-based careb Nonrelative home-based careb -1.304*** Multiple types of careb Age of entry Changed teacher during kindergarten 0.006 -0.720 Model 3 SE 0.200 0.285 0.222 0.282 0.007 0.433 0.352 0.479 0.542 0.631 0.009 0.313 0.330 0.459 0.614 Coefficient SE 29.962*** 0.183 0.259 0.228 0.234 -1.081*** -0.829** 2.697*** -0.002 -0.992* 1.812*** 0.419 0.797 0.802 0.005 -0.631* -0.863** -0.237 -0.626 0.444*** -0.527 Male Race African American 0.069 3.409*** 0.333 0.322 0.704 0.287 ?1 427*** 0.153*** 0.667 0.283 0.021 1.173*** 2.235*** 4.000*** 6.453*** 0.278 0.285 0.355 0.466 -0.870*** 0.227 1.046 0.283 0.458 0.488 0.077 0.341 0.383 0.316 0.362 0.247 0.295 Non-Hispanic Asian Native American -2.029** Highest parental education High school degree Vocational/technical program Bachelor's degree Advanced degree Marital status Divorced/separated Widowed -0.062 -0.675* Never married -1.116* Adoptive/no biological dad Non-English home language Number of children in household Midwest West -1.123* ?0.729*** -0.003 1.255** 0.346 1.661*** -0.576* -1.339*** South Private Central city Rural Panel B. Time Ie Intercept 2.930*** 0.047 Part day -0.298*** 0.073 Poverty Home learning environment 2.970*** -0.243*** -0.290*** 0.328*** 0.043 0.062 0.046 0.050 0.401 0.162 -0.945** Low birth weight Maternal age at first birth (years) 0.025 ?1.449*** Hispanic Multiracial 0.007 0.417 0.337 0.470 0.513 0.602 0.010 0.288 0.311 0.445 0.569 3.030*** -0.243*** -0.178*** 0.253*** 0.587 0.042 0.063 0.049 0.045 (Continued) This content downloaded from 129.219.247.33 on Wed, 17 Jan 2018 04:20:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 972 Votruba-Drzal, Li-Grining, and Maldonado-Carre?o Table 4 Continued Model 1 Coefficient Model 3 Model 2 SE Coefficient SE Coefficient Hours per week in child careb Center careb Relative home-based careb Nonrelative home-based careb -0.003 0.002 -0.001 0.059 0.058 Multiple types of careb Age of entry Changed teacher during kindergarten 0.052 0.064 0.115 -0.093 -0.059 0.017 -0.032 -0.020 0.089 -0.024 0.031*** -0.272* -0.257*** Male Race -0.313*** -0.1141 African American Hispanic 0.368*** Non-Hispanic Asian Native American -0.216f -0.011 -0.171* Multiracial Low birth weight Maternal age at first birth (years) 0.004 Highest parental education High school degree Vocational/technical program Bachelor's degree Advanced degree Marital status 0.154** 0.331*** 0.445*** 0.624*** Divorced / separated Widowed Adoptive/no biological dad Non-English home language Number of children in household 0.184* Rural -0.124 1.639*** 0.073*** Intercept Part day Poverty Home learning environment Age of entry Changed teacher during kindergarten 0.014 0.011 1.646*** 0.066*** -0.149*** 0.042*** 0.014 0.010 -0.012 0.009 Male Race African American 1.655*** 0.055*** 0.078*** Non-Hispanic Asian Native American Multiracial -0.005 This content downloaded from 129.219.247.33 on Wed, 17 Jan 2018 04:20:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 0.064 0.070 0.088 0.055 0.070 0.015 0.079 0.090 0.081 0.088 0.059 0.076 0.014 0.010 0.012 0.010 0.001 -0.093*** 0.014 -0.043f Maternal age at first birth (years) 0.057 0.010 -0.097*** Low birth weight 0.066 0.099 0.121 0.100 0.067 0.004 -0.002* -0.009 -0.015 -0.026t -0.080*** Hispanic 0.069 0.105 0.234** 0.136 -0.029 Panel C Time 2d 0.105 0.033 -0.219* 0.095 Central city 0.055 0.061 0.112 0.004 0.050 0.178 -0.1201 -0.062*** Midwest West South Private 0.002 0.057 -0.037 0.070 -0.231*** Never married SE 0.005 0.002** 0.023 0.015 0.020 0.025 0.023 0.016 0.001 Full- Versus Part-Day Kindergarten 973 Table 4 Continued Model 1 Coefficient Model 2 SE Coefficient Model 3 SE Highest parental education High school degree Vocational/technical program Bachelor's degree Advanced degree Marital status Divorced / separated Widowed Coefficient SE 0.087*** 0.139*** 0.191*** 0.207*** 0.017 0.016 0.018 0.009 0.012 0.041 0.013 0.023 0.014 -0.034 0.002 Never married 0.034 -0.025f Adoptive/no biological dad Non-English home language Number of children in household -0.013*** 0.000 -0.038* -0.016 0.004 -0.006 -0.028f Midwest West South Private Central city Rural 0.020 0.003 0.014 0.015 0.014 0.013 0.010 0.014 3Child-care characteristics at prekindergarten. bChild-care characteristics at kindergarten. cRate of change during the kindergarten year. dRate of change from the spring of kindergarten until the spring of fifth grade. ]p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. covariates. The introduction of this extensive set of covariates in Model 3 of Tables 3 and 4 further atten uated the association between kindergarten program type and achievement trajectories from the spring of kindergarten to fifth grade as well. Indeed, compared to Model 2, 36% of the part-day growth advantage in math and 17% of the part-day growth advantage for reading were explained by this set of covariates. Although child poverty continued to be significantly related to the second slope term, cognitive stimulation in the home environment was no longer a significant predictor. Thus, it appears that differences in poverty status, not cognitive stimulation in the home environ ment, may be responsible for explaining the part-day kindergarten advantage in academic growth from the spring of kindergarten through fifth grade. examining the implications of full- versus part-day kindergarten for children's learning trajectories. Spe cifically, this investigation recognizes both the hetero geneity of children's achievement trajectories and the complex configuration of child, family, and nonpar ental care factors that affect their developmental trajectories. In doing so, this study provides impor tant insights about the size and persistence of the full day kindergarten advantage and strengthens our understanding of when and why the full-day kinder garten advantage seems to fade out soon after the end of the kindergarten year. Full- Versus Part-Day Kindergarteners: A Descriptive Portrait Our descriptive portrayal of a nationally represen tative sample of kindergarteners revealed several Discussion Full-day kindergarten experiences are becoming increasingly common for children across the United States. Yet, there are notable gaps in the literature regarding whether full-day kindergarten attendance is advantageous for children's development. This is the first study to take a developmental approach to significant, but generally modest, differences in out of-school dimensions and individual characteristics of children in part- versus full-day kindergarten programs. Among the most notable difference is the racial composition of the two groups of children. More specifically, a greater proportion of children in part-day kindergarten were of Hispanic, non Hispanic White, Asian, and multiracial backgrounds, This content downloaded from 129.219.247.33 on Wed, 17 Jan 2018 04:20:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 974 Votruba-Drzal, Li-Grining, and Maldonado-Carre?o and a smaller proportion were of non-Hispanic Black and Native American race/ethnicity, in comparison to full-day kindergarteners. The largest difference when it came to racial composition was in the pro portion of children of non-Hispanic Black ethnicity in each group. This proportion was three times higher among full-day kindergarteners (22%) when com pared to part-day kindergarten students (7%). On the whole, the bivariate analysis suggests that part day kindergarteners were more advantaged socio economically; however, the multivariate analyses that controlled for these differences surprisingly revealed higher levels of academic achievement at the fall of two times as much time in school as half-day kinder garteners, they did not receive two times as much instruction (Xue, Burkam, & Lee, 2002). For example, full-day kindergarten teachers spend 5.5 hr per week in reading and language arts and 3.7 hr in mathemat ics, whereas part-day kindergarten teachers spend 4.3 hr in reading and language arts and 2.5 hr in math ematics (Xue et al., 2002). Furthermore, full- and part day classes are organized in similar ways, in terms of the proportion of time spent in whole class, small group, individual, and child-selected activities (Walston & West, 2002). Additional research on the heterogeneity of instructional practices and of kindergarten among children enrolled in full-day teacher - child interactions that occur within part- and kindergarten. Future research that more carefully full-day kindergarten programs may help identify models families' selection of full- versus part-day whether characteristics of kindergarten beyond pro programs for their children is needed to untangle gram type are more successful in promoting student achievement. the more complex story detected here. Benefits of Full-Day Kindergarten Attendance During the Fading Benefits of Full-Day Kindergarten Attendance Transition to School During Early Elementary School The results of this study concur with the existing body of research that has largely shown significant academic benefits of full- versus part-day kindergar ten programs (e.g., Cannon, Jacknowitz, & Painter, 2006; Clark & Kirk, 2000; Gullo, 2000; Kaplan, 2002; Perhaps the most troubling finding of the present study is that the academic benefits of full-day kinder garten subside soon after children leave kindergarten. This is congruent with past research that has found that the academic benefits of full-day kindergarten are relatively short lived (Karweit, 1987; Ohio State Legislative Office of Education, 1997; Weiss & Offen berg, 2002). Unlike prior research, this developmental Lee et al., 2006; Walston & West, 2004; Weiss & Offenberg, 2002). Unlike prior studies, however, the current investigation linked kindergarten program type not only to levels of academic achievement but approach paints a more nuanced understanding of math and reading skills during the kindergarten year the fade-out of the full-day kindergarten advantage, both by providing a more precise estimate of when the fade-out occurs and by shedding light on factors that also to individual growth trajectories of students' using data from a nationally representative study. Without controls for important child, family, and nonparental care characteristics, full-day kindergar ten students' achievement grew at a rate that was 0.246 points per month faster in math and 0.298 points per month faster in reading. This amounted to a mod est advantage in math and reading achievement, which was roughly one fifth of 1 SD. After an extensive set of child, family, school, and nonparental care characteristics were introduced to the growth models, the magnitude of the full-day kindergarten advantage dropped in half for math and by one quarter for reading, resulting in estimates of the full day kindergarten advantage that are quite small and are similar to those found by Cannon et al. (2006) with these same data. The modest nature of the full-day advantage may be attributed to slight differences in the amount and type of instruction taking place in kindergarten class rooms. Although teachers participating in the ECLS K report that full-day kindergarteners spent roughly are partially responsible for explaining why the trajectories of children in part- and full-day kinder garten converge. The fade-out occurs as the trajecto ries of children in part-day kindergarten grow at a steeper rate from the spring of kindergarten to the spring of fifth grade. Our models suggest that the advantage of full- versus part-day kindergarten fades out approximately 36 months after the spring of kindergarten assessment, or in the spring of third grade. Furthermore, the fade-out appears to be attrib uted to differences in the children and families that attend part- and full-day kindergarten, as well as school characteristics associated with kindergarten program type. These differences explained 42% of the part-day kindergarten growth advantage in math from the spring of kindergarten through the spring of fifth grade and 25% of the part-day growth advan tage for reading. Thus, it seems that the greater selection of children from, for example, economically disadvantaged households and a non-Hispanic Black This content downloaded from 129.219.247.33 on Wed, 17 Jan 2018 04:20:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Full- Versus Part-Day Kindergarten 975 ethnie background contributes to the fade-out of the What is perhaps most concerning is the immediate full-day kindergarten advantage after the end of the nature of these benefits, which raises questions about kindergarten year. It is important to recognize, how whether the cost of full-day as opposed to part-day kindergarten programs is associated with sufficient ever, that this study is not able to rule out the threat of omitted variable bias when examining the fade-out of benefits for children and society. the full-day kindergarten advantage during the early It is difficult based on the existing literature to elementary school years. Indeed, we are not able to rule determine the cost of full-day kindergarten programs. out the possibility that it may be an unmeasured characteristic of parents or children that jointly explain families' home environment quality and economic status, which seem to be important in explaining the fade-out of the full-day kindergarten advantage. Furthermore, this study fell short of entirely ex plaining why the growth rates of children attending part-day kindergarten programs tend to catch up to their full-day kindergarten counterparts so quickly. Other factors, such as subsequent schooling experi ences, may be at play. Research on Head Start pro grams, the federally funded early childhood education intervention for economically disadvan taged children, lends support for this hypothesis. Lee Cost estimates range substantially, even within the same state. According to Weiss and Offenberg (2002), who have conducted a cost-benefit analysis of full day kindergarten in the School District of Philadel phia, the cost of full-day kindergarten is approxi mately $2,300 per year per child. Yet, the Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children (2000) esti mated the median instructional expense of full-day kindergarten per pupil to be $5,216. A comprehensive cost-benefit analysis would be required to evaluate the relative effectiveness of public investments in full-day kindergarten as opposed to investment in other programs for children. To carefully conduct such an analysis, it would be important to look at and Loeb (1995) as well as Currie and Thomas (2000) found that differences in the schooling experiences subsequent to Head Start participation are important for understanding why Head Start effects seem to academic achievement, such as measures of socio emotional functioning and physical health and well being. Of course, the other rather obvious benefit of fade out over time. For example, using data from the full-day kindergarten that must be taken into account National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, Lee and Loeb found that children who attended Head Start were educated in schools of significantly lower quality, defined by social composition, academic rigor, safety, and social relations, when compared to counterparts who did not attend preschool and espe cially when compared to peers who attended other preschools. Similarly, more socioeconomically disad vantaged full-day kindergarten students may be attending schools of lower quality compared to the quality of schools attended by part-day kindergarten ers. In other words, differences in children's later schooling experiences may erode the benefits associ ated with both Head Start and full-day kindergarten participation. other domains of student functioning in addition to in a systematic analysis is its linkage with parental employment. Cannon et al. (2006) found that mothers are more likely to work full time in the kindergarten year if their children attend full-day kindergarten. Increases in parental employment benefit society with higher tax revenue and can boost families' household income. It may be that these benefits end up being more important in making the case for full-day kindergarten in the policy arena than are achievement gains made by full-day kindergarteners. Although the present study provides useful information about associations between kindergarten program type and two domains of achievement, a more systematic accounting of the costs and benefits of the program, similar to what has been conducted for the Perry Preschool Project (Barnett, 1996; Belfield, Nores, Bar nett, & Schweinhart, 2006), is necessary to evaluate Policy Implications Though it is impossible to reduce the threats of selection or omitted variable bias entirely with non experimental data, the results of this study suggest that the shift from part- to full-day kindergarten programs occurring across the United States may have positive implications for students' learning public investments in full-day kindergarten. Conclusions In sum, this study advances the literature on full versus part-day kindergarten attendance by situating modest but meaningful differences in the achieve such programs in a developmental context. Unlike prior studies in this research area, we recognized individual differences in children's achievement ment trajectories of full- and part-day kindergarten students that favor full-day kindergarten programs. acteristics, family factors, and nonparental care trajectories, at least in the short run. Here, we find trajectories as well as the constellation of child char This content downloaded from 129.219.247.33 on Wed, 17 Jan 2018 04:20:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 976 Votruba-Drzal, Li-Grining, and Maldonado-Carre?o experiences that add nuance and texture to children's lives. In doing so, this study moved beyond static views of children's achievement and revealed that attending full-day kindergarten yielded a modest benefit to children's academic trajectories over time. Furthermore, our developmental approach high lighted the importance of considering not only whether children attending full-day programs were able to sustain these benefits but also when children enrolled in full-day programs no longer maintained this advantage. Here, we pinpointed that academic benefits associated with full-day kindergarten program attendance faded out by the end of the primary grades. Last, our developmental view brought children's background characteristics and experiences into the "foreground" of understanding differences between children attending full- versus part-day kindergarten programs. In focusing on the multifaceted nature of children's lives, we found that child and family characteristics played noteworthy roles in why full-day benefits exist and in why these advantages fade relatively quickly. Incorporating a developmental perspective into future studies of policies relevant to young children's educational experiences may similarly prove fruitful. 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Running Head: SHOULD KIDS ATTEND FULL-DAY KINDERGARTEN?

Should Students attend the Full-Day Kindergarten Program?
Name:
Institution Affiliation:

1

DEBATE PAPER

2
Introduction

The philosophy underlying early childhood education is based on understanding informed
by rational thinking models which hold that, it is really about what kind of fully-realized human
being that child is going to become in future. This theory seeks to harvest from the child’s human
resources available so that their experience with the world is not like that of a stranger or an
innocent bystander (Clark, Kirk & Burriss, 2000). It entails nurturing confidence, initiative,
imagination, self-reliance, responsibility and discipline. Therefore, the work of the educator is to
give the conditions necessary for children to take on the path of reconstructing their values,
customs and beliefs.
Being an early childhood educator requires passion and ultimate sacrifice so as to
effectively deliver the primary objective: to support learning and nurture the child in all aspects
of human development including social, cognitive, physical and emotional developments through
providing materials that the child finds interest in. kindergarten teachers play the role of a guide
whereby the teacher leads the child to a totally new path in life. Teachers support the children in
learning and development by creating an environment for development and learning to take
place.
In light of an awakening influence and movement towards an increased focus on early
childhood education, policy concerns have been raised with regard to the pertinent issues facing
the sector. Across the US, these policy implementation concerns are similar as evidenced by a
lag in between policy formulation and implementation. Secondly, sector’s stakeholders are
having trouble integrating higher education with the issues taking place in kindergartens.

DEBATE PAPER

3
The Debate: Should Kids attend full-day Kindergarten?

The question as to whether kids should be enrolled in full-day K as opposed part-day K is
argued by both sides of this debate. The process is guided by the following viewpoints. For each,
I will present the perspectives of each side of the divide and finally give take a stand on the issue.
a) Poverty status
The debate here surrounds the merits of attending a full-day K for kids from
disadvantaged backgrounds. It is beneficial for poor kids to attend full-day programs since the
effect-size is different and that these kids’ academic results are much better than their
counterparts. Conversely, there is no significant variance in size effects and on top of that,
attending full-day programs has adversely affected the poor kids behaviour-wise. They argue that
many behavioural problems and are a confinement of children from poor backgrounds enrolled
in full-day kindergartens.
Interestingly, the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management in 2009
produced a report suggesting that full-day K has no marginal benefits for kids from financiallydisadvantaged families (Deming, 2009).
b) Skills acquired
Is attending full-day beneficial to students than half-day kindergarten? This debate has
been the centre of every policy discussions with teachers, child development expert and parents
citing academic reasons why they think full-day K benefits the children. The most pertinent
argument in this debate is that full-day K bette...


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