Effectiveness of a Direct Instruction Academic Kindergarten for Low-Income Students

This article addresses the issue of effective ways to educate low-income, educationally "at-risk" students in kindergarten by documenting an approach that has been effective in accelerating the academic growth of these students. First, the components of an academic kindergarten are described with a particular focus on how such a kindergarten can prepare students for the transition to first grade. The need to integrate academic activities with games and play experiences is stressed. Next, results of 2 research studies designed to evaluate both the short- and long-term benefits of academic kindergartens are presented. In the short-term study, a sample of disadvantaged students in East St. Louis who received a Direct Instruction (DI) program from kindergarten through third grade was compared with demographically similar students who received the DI program from first grade through third grade but did not receive an academic kindergarten. Results at the end of the third grade favored students who had received the academic kindergarten in reading, math, and language. In the second study, the ninth-grade achievement of the same 2 cohorts of students evaluated in Study 1 is presented. The results of this longitudinal study indicated that the benefits of an academic kindergarten were detected 6 years after the program had ended. This article concludes with a discussion of reasons why the academic kindergarten was successful: the quality of the curriculum, utilization of effective empirically derived teaching techniques, and maintenance of a high student success rate.