Preschool Dosage

Preschool Dosage Relationships with Children’s Social-Emotional and Executive Functioning Skills May 21, 2024 Diana Schaack, University of Colorado, Denver Vi-Nhuan Le, NORC at the University of Chicago

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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 estimated by part/full/extended status)

• 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) •

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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

Attendance

Preliminary Threshold

Working Memory

85%

Inhibition

85%

Protective Factors

85%

Behavioral Concerns

88%

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Threshold of Hours Per Week of Preschool Related to Improved Working Memory Maximum benefit

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Hours Per Week Thresholds (Very Preliminary) •

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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

Hours Per Week

Threshold

Working Memory

32 hrs

Inhibition

35 hrs

Protective Factors

None

Behavioral Concerns

35 hrs

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Hours Per Week Related to Improved SocialEmotional 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.

Questions? Please email us at: diana.schaack@ucdenver.edu

Thank You!