Full-day kindergarten can be 'life-changing,' improves scores, later success

PROVO — Dianne Amesse calls her kindergarten class "life-changing."

The five-year-olds may just be working on counting to 20 and putting spaces in between words in their writing journals, but she says offering full-day kindergarten to her students, 18 of whom are considered "at-risk," puts them on a path to success.

"The thing I've seen in years before is at-risk students being taken out of class year after year, even when they are in sixth grade," said Amesse, who teaches kindergarten at Edgemont Elementary. "But because of this rich experience, these kids will have the same opportunity as anyone else. Most are already ready for first grade."

Even Amesse is surprised by how much more her students are learning with the longer day — many are progressing twice as fast as traditional students in the half-day program.

While all-day kindergarten is common in other parts of the country, it's still a novel concept in much of Utah. This is the first year Edgemont has offered full-day kindergarten.

Utah lawmakers, educators and even some parents have traditionally been resistant to the idea of all-day kindergarten, but that could be changing, as studies show that the quality of kindergarten has an impact on later scholastic success and even earning power. Research is also showing that kids in all-day kindergarten perform better than those in half-day programs.

Several years ago, only a handful of schools in Utah even offered full-day kindergarten. But after these schools showed legislatures the strides they were making, lawmakers decided to set money aside for optional extended-day kindergarten, said Reed Spencer, state elementary and language arts specialist. And money was again set aside by the legislature this year that will likely go toward sustaining those programs, Spencer said.

Rep. Johnny Anderson, R-Taylorsville, tried to run a bill this session that would only allow the academically at-risk to participate in the program, but the bill never made it out of committee.

Lawmakers in Utah want to see direct correlation between money spent and outcomes, Anderson said, and at-risk students statistically are the ones who benefit the most from full-day kindergarten.

Yet, teachers and districts say that having some "model" students in their classes has helped the lower-achieving students progress faster and has helped the model students grow more as well.