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Reducing the School Performance Gap
Among Socio-economically Diverse Schools:

Comparing Full-Day and Half-Day Kindergarten Programs
 

Full Report (21 pp. 238K PDF)

Executive Summary
The Grade 2 class of 2003 showed impressive improvements in performance on a nationally normed achievement test compared with the performance of previous Grade 2 students. Moreover, the improvements for the Grade 2 class of 2003 were significantly greater in the schools characterized by high poverty when compared with schools in wealthier neighborhoods. The net effect of this phenomenon was to reduce the disparities in achievement between those schools in the wealthy and those in the poor neighborhoods.

 Chart: Academic Performance Gap Narrows in Mathematics Computation Scale Scores
Click picture for enlarged view
The benefits to the Grade 2 class of 2003 were most striking in the area of mathematics computation. A review of four successive years of Grade 2 test scores for students continuously enrolled since kindergarten in high-poverty schools showed that they attained an average scale score equivalent to the 78th national percentile level; whereas for the prior three years, students from those same schools produced average scale scores equivalent to just the 52nd national percentile level. Grade 2 students continuously enrolled in schools in the wealthier half of the school district attained an average scale score equivalent to the 86th national percentile, whereas for the prior three years, students from those same schools attained average scale scores equivalent to the 81st national percentile. A similar but less striking trend was evidenced in four other subject areas. That is, the margins of improvements in the schools in poorer neighborhoods were smaller but still significantly greater than the improvements demonstrated by second grade students in the schools in the wealthier neighborhoods.

These improvements in the class of 2003 accompany a significant investment in early elementary education in all schools within the school district, but particularly in the schools with the highest levels of educational and socioeconomic need.

The list of initiatives launched during the past three years is long and impressive:
  • Full-day kindergarten in the neediest schools

  • Kindergarten class size reduced to 15:1

  • Grades 1 and 2 class size reduced to 17:1

  • Revised curriculum and accompanying diagnostic assessments for
    Kindergarten through Grade 2

  • A new staff development teacher position in each school

  • Professional development for teachers in the new curriculum and assessments.
The implementation of these initiatives, across years and among schools, makes it difficult to attribute the improvements in the class of 2003 second graders to any single component of the drive for early academic achievement. However, the net effect of these initiatives has been to reduce the persistent gap in school performance between schools in poorer and wealthier neighborhoods.

MORE (238K PDF)
 

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