The effects of full-day everyday kindergarten on academic achievement and self-esteem

The trend to expand the traditional half-day kindergarten program into full-day programs has been the focus of debate and controversy. This controversy has focused on the following: (1) What is an appropriate length of a program day for the kindergarten child? (2) What are the academic and psychosocial effects of a full-day kindergarten program on five-year-old children?The primary purpose of this study was to measure the effects of a full-day everyday pilot kindergarten program on the academic achievement and self-esteem of five-year-old kindergarten children.Data were obtained from a sample of 106 kindergarten children, who were identified through a locally developed kindergarten screening assessment, and randomly selected by the principal at each project site. The experimental group consisted of 57 children from 3 full-day everyday classes. The comparison group was comprised of 49 children who attended 3 traditional half-day everyday classes.Information was gathered from classroom schedules, teacher daily lesson plans, classroom observations, standardized tests, student attendance records and parent questionnaires.Conclusion. The significantly higher achievement gain on the Pre-Reading Composite, as measured by the Metropolitan Readiness Tests (Nurss & McGauvran, 1986) suggest that full-day kindergarten yields more than half-day kindergarten yields in improving student academic achievement.Although the findings showed no significant differences between the full-day and half-day kindergarten groups in the areas of General Competence or Social Acceptance, the half-day students showed virtually no progress from pretest to posttest, whereas full-day students showed a pattern of pretest to posttest gain. The higher mean gain score for full-day students represented a stronger trend in the proper direction, suggesting a probable positive effect of full-day kindergarten on self-concept.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio