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Despite the vast body of research examining the relationship between full-day kindergarten attendance and children's outcomes, little is known about the effects of full-day kindergarten on children with disabilities (i.e., students with 1 of the 13 categories of disabilities recognized under federal law). This study fills this research void by examining whether full-day kindergarten participation predicts differences in achievement and social-emotional outcomes for children with disabilities. Using a national data set of kindergarten students from the 2010-2011 school year (ECLS-K:2011) and employing propensity matching, this study finds that relative to part-day kindergarten (PDK), full-day kindergarten (FDK) attendance is associated with higher achievement scores but also with higher frequencies of internalizing behaviors and lower incidences of self-control at the end of the kindergarten school year. The relationships between FDK attendance and outcomes varied by type of disability classification, such that significant achievement effects emerged only for children with learning and communication disorders. In addition, less time spent on child-initiated activities was associated with higher mathematics scores for children in FDK programs but not for children in PDK programs. Policy implications of the results are discussed.
Our nation's classrooms have become increasingly racially and ethnically diverse. Given these demographic changes, many policymakers and practitioners have expressed the need for increased attention to how teacher diversity might be linked to reducing racial/ethnic differences in teachers' ratings of social-emotional skills for students of color. Using the most recent nationally representative data, we investigated whether kindergarteners have different social-emotional ratings when they had a teacher whose racial/ethnic group was the same as their own. We found that having a teacher of the same race was unrelated to teachers' ratings of children's internalizing problem behaviors, interpersonal skills, approaches to learning, and self-control. However, students whose teachers' race/ethnicity matched their own had more favorable ratings of externalizing behaviors. Results are discussed in terms of implications for school disciplinary policies.