Effects of length of school day on kindergarten school performance and parent satisfaction

Abstract

A study was conducted to assess the effects of changing the length and regularity of the kindergarten school day on prereading skills, attending skills, and parental opinion of the program. Two rural Colorado school systems were studied in a matched control-comparison design, with the experimental groups attending a full-day, everyother-day program. Results indicated there were no significant differences between the groups on measures of school achievement and behavior. However, parental dissatisfaction appeared to increase in the experimental program. There is a need for further studies of altering the length of school days for establishing policies for kindergarten schedules.Requests for reprints should be sent to

Parents’ Perceptions of School Support During COVID-19: What Satisfies Parents?

“…However, many studies on school satisfaction focus on students' rather than on parents' satisfaction (Okun et al, 1990;Zullig et al, 2011;Casas et al, 2013;Weber and Huebner 2015;Arciuli et al, 2019;Arciuli and Emerson 2020). Studies on parents' satisfaction usually refer to parents of younger cohorts who attend kindergarten or elementary school (Ulrey et al, 1982;Griffith 2000;Cryer et al, 2002;Bailey et al, 2003;Thompson 2003;Fantuzzo et al, 2006;Bassok et al, 2018). In general, parents of older children seem less satisfied with schools than parents of younger students (Thompson 2003: 280f;Fantuzzo et al, 2006), which may signal that parents of older children are likely to have higher educational expectations than parents of younger children (Stull 2013).…”