The purpose of this quantitative study was to investigate whether there is a relationship between Tennessee's Voluntary Prekindergarten (VPK) program and kindergarten achievement. I compared the academic growth of who attended a VPK program to students in Title 1 schools who did not attend a VPK program. Kindergarten gives the first easyCBM assessment in the second semester of school. I compared the easyCBM scores of the students who attended a VPK program to the ones who did not attend a VPK program. This could reveal if attending the VPK program is related to the students’ academic growth and the amount of intervention a student will need the second semester of kindergarten.
The upper-east Tennessee school system used in this study consisted of a high-quality prekindergarten program and high-quality schools. I examined a population of 628 kindergarten students. There were a total of 280 students who attended the VPK program and a total of 348 students who attended a Title 1 school and did not attend a VPK program. I was given permission from the school system to access the data. The easyCBM data was compiled by the performance excellence administrator and the director of early childhood of the school system. The data consisted of 3 consecutive years of data. The VPK students performed significantly better on the December easyCBM letter sounds, phoneme-segmenting, and math common core state standards screener scores. There was no significant difference in the December easyCBM word reading frequency screener scores. The VPK students performed significantly better on the May easyCBM letter sounds screener scores. There was no significant difference in the May easyCBM phoneme-segmenting and word reading frequency screener scores. The VPK students made significant gains from the December easyCBM scores to the May easyCBM scores. There was not a significant difference in the gain scores of the VPK students and the Title 1 students who did not attend a VPK program.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ETSU/oai:dc.etsu.edu:etd-5446 |
| Date | 01 August 2021 |
| Creators | Thompson, Kindetta L |
| Publisher | Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University |
| Source Sets | East Tennessee State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations |
| Rights | Copyright by the authors. |
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