All Day K - From Concept to Perception to Reality

It was reported in the Express-Times today by JD Malone that "Nazareth Area School District officials want to use a grant to create a full-day kindergarten pilot program." (read the article here)

Brad Moulton provided this in his notes from the Board Meeting "Mr. Mudlock (Shafer principal) gave a presentation promoting an all day K-garten pilot program. He had a handout listing the benefits of all day kindergarten."(read the post here)

I was quite surprised about this because I had contacted Mr. Mudlock on 3/7/07 after two people told me a plan was being developed for an all-day K program at Shafer. In part I wrote:

"Each has indicated that you are going to be requesting full day K for all students at Shafer as a Pilot program beginning fall of 2007 to the Board of Directors at their upcoming meeting. I am writing to find out if this is accurate. If it is not, is there anything related to this that may have been misconstrued?"

To which he responded:

"What will be discussed with the team will be what a full day program will look like at the kindergarten level. It is an information gathering session about the "pro's" and "con's" of a full day program.

It is NOT in any way to determine if there will be a full day kindergarten program at Shafer."

Now, I did hear it was for all students and in reality it would be for 15-18, but 30 more are already in the at-risk all-day K program and that only leaves 25 (there are roughly 70 currently enrolled for next year's K class), meaning more than half the students would then be in some form of all-day K. Having said that, his response led me to believe this was an internal discussion, not something being presented to the Board for the purpose of implementation, hence my surprise.

Yesterday I requested a copy of the handout and he promptly forwarded it to me. I also asked Dr. Lesky and Mrs. Dautrich who were copied, what happens next? I did not yet receive an answer, but based on Malone's article it would appear that either the Admin will conduct the PILOT without consent of the Board or they will require Board approval.

So what about All Day K?

Many people favor All Day K for a variety of reasons, but I am not one of them.

All day K is favored by many for a couple of simple, non-academic reasons. If your kids are in day care and go to a pre-k environment, most places now offer an all day K program because it makes economic sense. Instead of losing money from a child the center offers all day, you pay no more than you did the year before and the center keeps the child an extra half year. For the parent the child has a less 'hectic' day. Drop at care provider, pick up at care provider, not drop at care, care to school, school to care, parent pick up.

K is optional in PA and it is a half day for two primary reasons. It is to serve as a transition into the school environment and it is economical for the schools. I did read in one research paper that 25% of kids were in all day care in 1988 compared to 55% more recently, which is why there is a more widespread movement promoting All-Day K in the schools.

The other aspect of all Day K is that it seems to make sense. Longer day, more education, better for child. There is research supporting it, most by schools and educators or educational institutions, all of whom can benefit by it or support spending for it. Then I found a RAND Education report, "School Readiness, Full-Day Kindergarten, and Student Achievement: An Empirical Investigation." The study used data from a longitudinal study of K classes from 1998-99 and tracked progression through later grades. Upon reading the summary and parts of the full report (79 pages long) I realized All-Day K could have been included in the book Freakonomics as a case study.

The Full Day Kindergarten Pilot Program (as presented by Mr. Mudlock)

The document I received that was handed out at the meeting was a page and a half long. It included several sections: Goal, What Full Day K is Not, What the Research Says, Possible Negative Impacts, and Keys to Program Success.

With only 2 'possible' negative impacts and sixteen positive ones and no notation indicating from where the facts came, it was more a sales tool than a balance of pro's and con's.

I guess the assumption is that Full-Day K is better than Half Day K for the reasons listed in "What Does the Research Say?" but no where is there a definitive statement indicating a study that demonstrates this statement to be true.

My further comments will all be based on the research I found in the report noted above. One finding of that report in summary is that K readiness is the critical factor and a failure to control for it in past studies has resulted in erroneous conclusions regarding all day K results.

Possible Negative Impacts?

• "There is no recorded evidence for detrimental effects of a Full-Day K program." In reality, when controlling for nonacademic readiness at K entry, children who attended a full-day program at K, showed poorer mathematics performance in fifth grade than did children who had attended a part-day kindergarten program (summary, page xii).
  
• "When Full-Day program is developmentally appropriate, it does not overly stress or pressure five and six year old students."

What Does the Research Say?

There are sixteen items, all positive, regarding All Day K.

• Of the sixteen, eleven were in regard to having more time for x, y, and z. Of course if you go from roughly three hours a day to six hours a day, you will have more time. What this doesn't address is if this time spent is more beneficial than a half day in school and a half day with a parent or care-giver. The report notes that like block scheduling (my comparison, not theirs), supports of All Day K promote the idea that it allows for more instructional time. It does, but does not add up to a "double dosage". Instead, a study found that full day spend roughly 15 minutes of additional instruction per day in each subject.
  

The other items are worth examining in more detail:

• "Students consistently progress further academically." See note above indicating actually declines by 5th grade in math. Further, attending a full-day kindergarten was unrelated to reading performance by fifth grade (page xii)
  
• "Full-Day programs have longer lasting academic benefits for children as they progress into first grade." AND very similarly, "It increases student readiness for first grade". The report states that "The existing literature on the effects of full-day kindergarten on student achievement finds positive outcomes in the proximal years but little difference as children progress through school (summary page 6). Further, "they noted a positive achievement effect of full-day kindergarten through the end of kindergarten, but also found that the effect was reduced by half at the end of first grade and eliminated by the end of third grade (page 7)
  
• "There are less referrals for special education services in later grades." Will need to look deeper into the report for any information in this area as time was short I was unable to do so this morning.
  
• "It narrows the achievement gap between low-income and other students." The report indicates "Lee et al. (2006) also report no differential effects of full-day kindergarten by socioeconomic background, and highly inconsistent differential effects by race/ethnicity.
  

The report I referenced, that took into account many studies and other research, was quite clear in its emphasis that K readiness is the critical factor in long term success and further that a failure to control for this has resulted in research supporting full-day K, when in fact it is not only not as good as half-day, in many instances it is worse.

The question then is one of perception, convenience, and economics.

What do you think?