National Center for Education Statistics June 2004
The National Center for Education Statistics is doing a markedly better job these days of gathering, analyzing and reporting data than of "getting the word out" about what you can learn from it. I don't know why it and the Education Department are so muted about so many first-rate statistical products. One surmises it's a consequence of submerging NCES in the new Institute of Education Sciences, which seems interested only in research and evaluation, not data, though the latter are generally more informative and unimpeachable. In any case, we have here another strong and illuminating (if tardy) report, based on the first installment of an important longitudinal study that began with the kindergarten class of 1998-99. The essence of this 68-page report is conveyed in a four-page concluding chapter, which says, among other things, that:
- Fifty-six percent of all U.S. kindergarteners are in full-day programs while the remainder attends for a half-day.
- Full-day programs are most often found in the South, least often in the Northeast, and more often in Catholic than public (or other private) schools.
- Poor and minority children are more apt to be in full-day programs than affluent and white youngsters.
- The instructional program is (proportionately) similar in full and half-day kindergarten programs, including nearly ubiquitous daily work on reading and language arts.
- "The children enrolled in a full-day program make greater gains in reading language arts over the course of the kindergarten year compared to those in half-day classes. The differences . . . are not only apparent when simple comparisons of gains are made, they persist when the comparisons of gains take into account other influential child and class characteristics."
If you'd like to see for yourself, it's publication NCES 2004-078 and you can find it on the web here.
