Fullday versus Halfday Kindergarteners DIBELS Reading Scores

1
Full-day versus Half-day Kindergarteners DIBELS
Reading Scores
USDOE Office of Special Education Programs
Personnel Preparation 84-325H
Graven, L., Nation, T., Ohlson, S., King, J., and
Lindstedt, E.
Department of Communication Sciences and
Disorders, Northern Arizona University,
Flagstaff, AZ 86011
Sample
Discussion
Abstract

Full-day students ISF scores also improved by
mid-year, with only half as many students
identified as High Risk compared with the
beginning scores. Conversely, a greater number
of both half- and full-day kindergarteners were
identified as High Risk by the LNF subtest
administered mid-year. End-of-year test scores
demonstrated the greatest increases in the WUF
subtest by the half-day kindergarten classes.
Final results indicated that while gains were
made by all, neither full-day nor half-day
kindergarten classes consistently met benchmark
scores on the ISF and LNF subtests of the DIBELS
assessment.

Students from sixteen kindergarten classrooms at
Thomas Elementary School, Kinsey Elementary
School, Killip Elementary School, Christensen
Elementary School, and Puente de Hozho Elementary
School in the Flagstaff Unified School District
were given the DIBELS reading assessment. The
full-day kindergarten class was conducted from
830-300 daily. Three other classrooms in our
sample were half-day kindergartens. Two were
conducted from 830-1200, while the other was
from 1230-300 daily. All children enrolled in
kindergarten were given the DIBELS assessment.
The average number of children enrolled in
full-day kindergarten classes was twenty-two
versus twenty in the half-day kindergarten
classes.
The results did not indicate a clear advantage of
full-day over half-day instruction as reflected
in DIBELS reading scores from the beginning of
the school year to the end of the school year to
reach benchmark. Although the beginning and
middle scores were higher for the full-day, the
half-day kindergartners made significant gains in
reading skills towards the end of the school year
and narrowed the gap. Many factors could play a
part in these results. Differences could be due
to various home environments and home exposure to
pre-literacy activities. The half-day
kindergarteners could have benefited more from
classroom instruction if they entered school with
less literacy exposure than their full-day peers.
In addition, home environment and literacy
exposure play might have played a significant
role in the overall academic success of children
attending both full- and half-day kindergarten.
Further research using a larger sample of
half-day kindergarten classrooms is needed to
determine if the performance of Arizonas
kindergarteners is similar to that found
nationally namely better performance on
academic tasks for full-day instruction. In
addition, the performance of English Language
Learners (ELL) (a significant proportion of
Arizonas population) needs to be examined
independently as playing a potential role in
reading scores.
Do full-day kindergarteners perform better on
measures of pre-literacy than half-day
kindergarteners? Kindergarteners scores on the
Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills
(DIBELS) were used to measure and compare reading
scores. Beginning, middle and end of year
benchmark scores of 13 full day and three half
day kindergarten classes were compared. The
children were retested immediately following
winter break and again at the end of the spring
semester. The students were given the following
three subtests Initial Sound Fluency (ISF),
Letter Naming Fluency (LNF), and Word Use Fluency
(WUF). Initial Sound Fluency tests a students
ability to recognize initial sounds in words.
Letter Naming Fluency tests the ability of the
student to name both upper and lowercase letters.
Word Use Fluency evaluates a students ability
to correctly use words in connected speech. The
beginning, middle and end scores of each
kindergarten class were compared to evaluate the
percentage of increase the students exhibited
from the beginning of the school year to the end
of the school year.


Table 1
Methods
The DIBELS reading assessment was administered by
certified DIBELS examiners to all kindergarteners
in the Flagstaff Unified School District (FUSD).
The students were tested in Initial Sound Fluency
(ISF), Letter Naming Fluency (LNF), and Word Use
Fluency (WUF) according to test protocol.
Initial Sound Fluency tests the students ability
to recognize initial sounds and words. Letter
Naming Fluency tests the ability of the student
to name both upper and lower case letters. Word
Use Fluency evaluates the students ability to
correctly use words in connected speech.
Individual test scores were used to calculate the
mean score and standard deviation of each
subtest. Beginning, mid-year and end of the year
DIBELS scores from five FUSD schools were
compared to determine the percentage of increases
found across subtests for each school.
Introduction
With the advent of funding for universal full-day
kindergarten in Arizona, state legislators,
parents and educators eagerly await the results
of annual academic assessments. Governor Janet
Napolitano is optimistic that this step will
provide the impetus to raise Arizonas dismal
educational ranking. Arizona's future depends
on whether today's kindergartners are given the
educational opportunities to become the next
generation of creative thinkers. (AzCentral.com,
2005). Plucker et.al. (2005) reviewed studies
conducted nationally, which suggest that full-day
programs tend to offer a greater number of
child-initiated instructional opportunities.
The published research also provides convincing
evidence that certain types of reading skills and
grouping strategies are more prevalent in
full-day programs, including reading aloud, peer
tutoring, and mixed-ability grouping (Plucker,
2005). While a few skeptics have found the
benefits of full day instruction to be
negligible, the most recent evidence suggests
that full day kindergarteners receive the
equivalent of an extra month of instruction
resulting in more advanced literacy, math and
science skills, as well as increased social
experiences (Lee, et.al., 2006). In fact,
seventh grade students in Alhambra School
District who attended full day kindergarten eight
years earlier still achieve higher overall
assessment scores than those who attended
half-day kindergarten (AzCentral.com, 2005). Of
course, length of the school day is not the only
factor affecting childrens progress in school.
Socio-economic status, home stability, parental
involvement, teaching methods, individual
maturity and stress levels also play a part in
how well children learn. This study, however,
only examines the pre-literacy skills of full-
and half-day kindergarteners as measured at
beginning, mid-year and end of year.
Conclusions
Table 2
Full- day and half-day kindergartners make
significant literacy gains through classroom
instruction from the beginning to the end of the
school year. Half-day kindergarteners may make
greater gains during the second half of the year,
mitigating full-day instructional advantages.
References
Results
AzCentral.com. Expanding kindergarten to full
day is a wise move. 02/27/2006 Plucker, J.
(2004). Effects of full day versus half day
kindergarten Review and analysis of national and
Indiana data. Center for Evaluation and Education
Policy Lee, V.E., Burkam, D., Ready, D.,
Honigman, J. Meisels, S. Full day versus half
day kindergarten In which program do children
learn more? American Journal of Education. Vol.
112, 2, 02/06. U.S. Department of Education,
National Center for Education Statistics,
Reading-Young Childrens Achievement and
Classroom Experiences, NCES 2003-070, by Kristin
Denton, Jerry West, and Jill Walston,
Washington, DC 2003.
The DIBELS test results obtained in thirteen
full-day FUSD kindergarten classes and three
half-day kindergarten classes indicated a
substantial number of children who were
identified as high risk for literacy difficulties
in both full day and half day classes at the
beginning of the school year. However, initial
DIBELS test results indicated that while the
number of students identified as Low Risk by the
ISF subtest was similar for both groups, the
number of children identified as High Risk by the
ISF subtest was significantly higher in the
half-day group than in the full-day group (27.3
vs. 18.8, respectively). A similar trend is
seen in the LNF subtest scores with the full-day
students less likely to be categorized as High
Risk. The WUF subtest, in contrast, reveals that
the half-day students used a larger number of
words, on average, than the full-day students,
thus demonstrating greater proficiency on this
subtest. Mid-year test scores demonstrated that
the full-day kindergarten students made the
greatest gains in WUF, nearly doubling their mean
score.
Table 3

Acknowledgements
We thank the kindergarten teachers at Thomas
Elementary School, Kinsey Elementary School,
Killip Elementary School, Christensen Elementary
School, and Puente de Hozho Elementary School in
the Flagstaff Unified School District.