The Longitudinal Study of the Georgia Pre-Kindergarten Program
The Georgia Pre-kindergarten Program was established in 1993 to provide Georgia's four-year-old children with high-quality preschool experiences. This educational initiative, funded by the Georgia Lottery for Education, serves in excess of 60,000 children each school year. The goal of every Georgia Pre-kindergarten classroom is to provide young children with the learning experiences they need in order to prepare for kindergarten.
The Applied Research Center at Georgia State University is conducting a twelve-year longitudinal study of the lottery-funded voluntary Georgia Pre-kindergarten Program (Pre-K) for four-year-olds. The evaluation, which is being funded by the Office of School Readiness, is designed to follow approximately 4,000 Pre-K children through their school careers to study the effects of Pre-K on future educational achievement. In addition, the study should contribute to our understanding of how young children develop and benefit from various educational experiences.
In the initial year of the study, the 1996-97 school year, 220 pre-kindergarten classrooms were selected --stratified by curriculum type, organization type, and region of the state. Data collection methods included on-site interviews with directors and teachers, on-site classroom observations, two phone surveys with teachers, student ratings completed by teachers, and phone surveys with parents of children participating in the program.
For the second year of the study, the Pre-K children were followed into approximately 1,850 kindergarten classrooms across the state. Data collection methods included written surveys with principals and teachers, phone surveys with teachers, student ratings completed by teachers, and phone surveys with parents of children participating in the study. Additionally, a randomly selected group of approximately 300 kindergarten classrooms received on-site classroom observations.
In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the Pre-K program, data collection methods for the past two years have focused on multiple sources of input at different times during the school year. Teachers' ratings of individual students in 16 different skill areas were reported for the beginning and the end of the school year, as well as teacher expectations about individual student achievement. These ratings provide a picture of the child's academic and social levels of functioning, as well as information about the child's overall preparedness to be successful in the school environment. Principals' and teachers' beliefs about early childhood education, plus teachers' reports about early childhood education practices, were collected throughout the year. Interviews with parents about their child's experiences and their beliefs tied to educational expectations were conducted at the end of the school year. On-site classroom observations conducted throughout the year contributed to ratings of the classroom environment. In following years, this general approach to data collection will continue with slight modifications to ensure that the most useful information is collected for each grade level. For example, site visits will no longer be conducted after the kindergarten year, yet standardized test scores will be collected as children get older.
