Preschool Dosage
RelationshipswithChildren’s
Social-Emotional and Executive FunctioningSkills
May21,2024
Diana Schaack, University of Colorado, Denver
Vi-Nhuan Le, NORC at the University of Chicago
Key Preschool Initiative Design Decisions: Preschool Dosage
Predominant conceptualizations of preschool dosage include attendance/absenteeism, part vs. full day attendance, and one vs. two years of preschool attendance. In considering dosage, preschool initiatives have to balance:
• Funding available, Family needs, Child development goals
Approaches to Hours Per Week and Attendance Policies
• DPP Approach
• UPP Approach
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What do we know about preschool attendance and hours per week dosage?
Hours Per Week:
• Learning Domain Specific Findings
– More hours enrolled in preschool related to higher math and preliteracy scores (Skibbe et al., 2011; Fuller et al., 2017).
– More preschool hours related to more behavior problems (Huston et al., 2015; McCartney et al., 2010).
• Quality
– Interaction between classroom quality and hours of attendance (Melo et al., 2022)
Attendance
– Children who miss more days of preschool demonstrate lower kindergarten readiness scores (Ansari & Purell, 2017) and more likely to be chronically absent in later grades (Ehrlich, et al., 2018)
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Using Data to Inform Policy and Programming
Prior research does not lend itself to understanding “how many hours” or “how much attendance” supports kindergarten readiness; especially in relatively high-quality preschool programs.
Research Questions
• Are there thresholds in children’s attendance rates related to children’s gains in social-emotional and executive functioning skills at the end of preschool?
• Are there thresholds in hours per week of preschool care related to children’s gains in social-emotional and executive functioning skills at the end of preschool?
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Methods
Measures
• Attendance
– Number of days attended/number of days scheduled to attend
• Hours per Week
– Attendance X number of hours of care (as estimatedby part/full/extendedstatus)
• Social-Emotional (DECA)
– Protective Factors (relationships, initiative, self-control)
– Behavioral Concerns
• Executive Functioning (CHEXI)
– Working Memory
– Inhibition
Analytic Technique: Generalized Additive Models (GAM)
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Threshold of Attendance Related to Improved Inhibition (Executive Function Domain)
Maximum benefit
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Attendance Thresholds (Very Preliminary)
• Trends across outcomes suggest that greater attendance, up to a point, is related to better executive functioning and social-emotional skills
• Across outcomes, we observe that an attendance rate of approximately 85% may be needed to yield maximum benefits
• After an approximate 85% attendance rate, we do not observe additional benefits
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Attendance Preliminary Threshold Working Memory 85% Inhibition 85% Protective Factors 85% Behavioral Concerns 88%
Threshold of Hours Per Week of Preschool
Related to Improved Working Memory
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Maximum benefit
Hours Per Week Thresholds (Very Preliminary)
• Between 32-35 hours of preschool per week may be needed to reduce difficulties with executive functioning and reducing problem behaviors
• We do not observe significantly more reductions in problem behaviors and difficulties with executive function with more than 32-35 hours a week of preschool attendance
• No thresholds in hours per week of preschool were observed related to increased protective factors; that is, there is no surge in outcomes or a leveling off of improvements in outcomes after a certain number of hours per week
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Hours Per Week Threshold Working Memory 32 hrs Inhibition 35 hrs Protective Factors None Behavioral Concerns 35 hrs
Hours Per Week Related to Improved Social-
Emotional Protective Factors
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Policy Implications
Incentivizing attendance rates to 85%
• 29% of DPP children attended less than 85% of the school year
Between 30-35 hours a week of preschool may yield largest gains in children’s social-emotional and executive functioning skills
• Average hours of DPP child attendance is approximately 27 hours*
• Need for strong processes for blending and braiding DPP and UPP funding to be able to provide Denver’s children with hours of preschool programing that best support important aspects of kindergarten readiness
Strengthening dosage data
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Next Steps
Validating thresholds on social-emotional and executive functioning skills
• Increasing sample: Adding 400 new cases
• Improving dosage data
• Longer-term effects
Exploring dosage thresholds on cognitive outcomes
• Conducted preliminary analysis
• Adding to the sample to be able to provide more reliable results
Other possibilities to use this innovative analytic technique
• Ex. Classroom quality, turnover, etc.
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Thank You! Questions? Please email us at: diana.schaack@ucdenver.edu