Regional Differences in Kindergartners' Early Education Experiences. Statistics in Brief. NCES 2005-099

This statistics-in-brief report takes a closer look at two of kindergartners' early education experiences, preschool and kindergarten, in each of four regions of the United States (i.e., Northeast, South, Midwest, and West). This report defines early education experiences as participation in preschool, the number of hours spent in preschool, and the type of kindergarten program (i.e., full-day versus half-day). Preschool experience was based on parental report and defined as kindergartners' participation in either a child care center, preschool, nursery school, prekindergarten or Head Start program the year prior to kindergarten. The purpose of this report is to describe, rather than explain, kindergartners' patterns of participation in preschool and kindergarten programs, and characteristics of the programs and the kindergartners who attend them, in an attempt to provide a regional picture of kindergartners' early learning experiences. This report expands on the findings from the earlier reports (Smith et al. 2003; Walston and West 2004; Wirt et al. 2004) by including kindergartners' participation in all types of center-based care arrangements the year before kindergarten, rather than focusing only on public school prekindergarten programs, and also looks more closely at regional participation in preschool and kindergarten for kindergartners with different individual, family, and school characteristics. This report attempts to answer two questions about kindergartners' early education experiences within and across four regions of the United States: (1) What are the regional differences in kindergartners' preschool experiences (e.g., center-based care or Head Start the year before kindergarten entry) in the United States? and (2) Are there regional differences in kindergartners' participation in full-day versus half-day kindergarten programs in the United States?