Recent policy dialogue suggests that chronic absenteeism is not only underdocumented, but is also detrimental to the success of students as early as kindergarten. That said, almost no empirical research has examined the effects of chronic absenteeism on student outcomes. This study addresses this underresearched issue in more depth. Using a…

The economic status of families and their children's learning outcomes are closely related. For example, children living in poverty tend to score worse on measures of reading and math performance than their more affluent peers, and this achievement gap is present by kindergarten. In this study, we identified protective factors associated with…

This study compared the impact of 2 types of small-group interventions targeting below-level 3rd-grade students. The study compared WordWork decoding and spelling instruction (Calfee, Miller, Norman, Wilson, & Trainin, 2006; Calfee & Patrick, 1995), which includes attention to articulation and metacognition, with a more traditional…

Investments in high-quality early care and education have been shown to reap societal benefits across the lives of the children served. A key intervention point is in the lives of 3- to 5-year olds during the period prior to entering kindergarten. Many jurisdictions have developed broad-based prekindergarten initiatives. This study reports on a…

This study examined the effects of a computer-based early reading program (Headsprout Early Reading) on the oral language and early reading skills of at-risk preschool children. In a pretest-posttest control group design, 62 children were randomly assigned to receive supplemental instruction with Headsprout Early Reading (experimental group) or…

Literacy data collected over the course of 2 academic years were used to estimate the rate at which full- and half-day kindergartners acquired literacy skills during kindergarten, 1st grade, and the intervening summer. Application of piecewise growth models to the time series data obtained on a sample of students from a large Southwestern school…

In this randomized field trial of KindergARTen Camp, a 6-week summer enrichment program in literacy and the fine arts, we analyzed the summer learning outcomes of 93 treatment and 35 control students from high-poverty schools in Baltimore, Maryland. This experiment offers evidence concerning the causal effect of the program on 5 measures of…

This article evaluates the utility of the Early Authors Program, a 12-month early literacy intervention emphasizing highly meaningful language interactions that was implemented in childcare facilities in an ethnically and linguistically diverse, urban, low-income community. Children learn to be writers and readers by creating their own…

Few studies investigating the impacts of teacher characteristics and beliefs about the importance of early skill learning have included measures of children's learning outcomes. This study investigated how teachers' educational attainment, experience, and beliefs impact the development of letter identification and number concepts (enumeration,…

The goal of this project was to develop and test the efficacy of a research-based early reading program that provided integrated reading instruction in kindergarten through 2nd grade. The Reading and Integrated Literacy Strategies (RAILS) program provided integrated instruction in word reading, vocabulary development, and comprehension to students…

This study investigated whether participation in the Chicago Child-Parent Center (CPC) Preschool Program associated with higher educational attainment (high school completion, highest grade completed, and college attendance) at age 22. The study sample included 1,334 youth (869 in the preschool group and 465 in the comparison group) from the…