The purpose of the present study was to examine Frog Street Pre-K curriculum efficacy by comparing learning outcomes for pre-K students in schools with access to Frog Street in Texas during the 2021-22 school year to outcomes for pre-K students in Texas schools without Frog Street. This study is designed to replicate and extend those employed by…

Background: Home-visiting programs are an often-used intervention for supporting the well-being of families with young children, and there is long-standing interest among researchers in ensuring the effectiveness of this practice. Especially, retention and attrition play important roles in achieving desired outcomes of the intervention. Objective:…

There is a need for Early Childhood Education prior to attending elementary school, to create a preschool age preclusion for school readiness. This study contributes to the current body of research on the impact of Early Childhood Education on reading achievement. The purpose of this study was to determine if attending a preschool program made an…

Children with early symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity are at risk for poor academic outcomes, but it is unclear how parents mitigate this risk prior to school entry for preschool-aged boys and girls. The current study examined the impact of child gender and mothers' parenting sense of competence on the relationship between…

Kindergarten is emphasized as a critical first entry into the education system, as politicians and pundits believe kindergartners' success can lead to later academic achievement. Therefore, a comprehensive understanding of kindergarten school readiness data should consider how it is measured and how that affects learning. Using the Early Childhood…

Pre-kindergarten (Pre-K) programs typically improve early academic skills, but those gains too often disappear after children transition to elementary school. At least three hypotheses explain this "fade-out" of Pre-K effects: Pre-K does not focus on the "trifecta skills" that uniquely support subsequent learning and…

This dissertation presents a thorough investigation into the impact of dual enrollment programs on postsecondary achievement among students who identify as Black/African American. Dual enrollment initiatives have gained significant attention in recent years as a promising approach to enhance students' readiness for higher education and facilitate…

The purpose of this correlational study was to investigate the relationship between the quality of the Early Childhood Education (ECE) programs for students who attended a Prekindergarten (PK) program, and for students who did not attend a Pre-kindergarten program from a rural school district located in South Carolina. The population of students…

Despite being a critical emergent literacy skill and an indicator of risk for later reading difficulties, relatively little is known about how alphabet knowledge develops over time. This study utilized a person-centered approach and longitudinal sample of 998 preschool-aged children (M = 56.50 months old) to examine patterns in letter name and…

Teachers are the single most important in-school factor affecting student learning outcomes. As a result, researchers and policy makers are particularly interested in the ways that teacher-level factors influence the learning opportunities that teachers provide in their classrooms. A growing body of research suggests that the expectations a…

Background: Early care and education (ECE) quality has been a topic of discussion for several decades (Burchinal, 2018; Mashburn et al., 2008; NICHD ECCRN, 2002). The structure-process-child outcomes theory proposes that structural features (e.g., teacher education, class size) of quality predict process quality (e.g., teacher-child interactions),…

Early educational interventions, such as Head Start, have been widely recognized as an effective way to mitigate the negative effects of poverty on early learning and development (Camilli, Vargas, Ryan, & Barnett, 2010). In the past decade, there has been a strong expansion of early childhood programming, including Head Start and state-funded…

This article investigates to what extent disrupted schooling due to the COVID-19 pandemic has affected pre-primary-age children's school readiness in Ethiopia. We use data on early numeracy of 2,640 children collected before and after the eight-month school closure to assess their learning progress in the context of COVID-19. We find that children…

The Waterford Institute recognizes that nearly half of the country's 4-years-olds face socioeconomic barriers that keep them from early education. Utah Preparing Students Today for a Rewarding Tomorrow (UPSTART) is a home-based computer preschool program developed and provided by Waterford to prepare young children for school entry and future…

This sequential mixed methods study evaluated the impact of the Chicago Parent Program (CPP) in 12 Baltimore Title I PreK programs on parent engagement and student outcomes from kindergarten through 2nd grade. Phase 1 (quasi-experiment; N = 11,996) compared PreK students whose parents enrolled in CPP with those whose parents did not enroll in CPP…