A Short-Term Longitudinal Study of the Relationship Between Classroom Quality and Child Language and Academic Outcomes in a State-Funded Pre-Kindergarten Program

The purpose of my study was to evaluate the relationship between classroom process quality and child language and academic outcomes from the beginning of the pre-kindergarten year to the beginning of the kindergarten year for one cohort of children participating in a state-funded pre-kindergarten program in South Carolina. Data for my study were part of a larger extant dataset from the evaluation of the South Carolina Child Development Education Pilot Program. Individual child assessment data collected in the fall of the pre-kindergarten year and the fall of the kindergarten year for 118 children from 49 classrooms were compared to classroom observation data collected in the spring of the pre-kindergarten year. The measure used to capture classroom process quality was the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS; Pianta, LaParo, & Hamre, 2008). The Picture Vocabulary Test 4 (PPVT 4; Dunn & Dunn, 2007) measured child receptive language outcomes and the Woodcock-Johnson-III (WJ-III-Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2001) measured child pre-academic achievement. Because children were nested within classrooms, hierarchical linear modeling (HLM, Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002) was the analytic framework used to examine the relationship between classroom quality measured by the CLASS and the individual child outcomes of receptive language and academic achievement. Findings included no significant relationships between dimensions of classroom process quality and the child outcomes of receptive language and academic achievement. Discussion of these results and Implications for future research is discussed