A good deal of the advantage of attending preschool among low-income children is lost by the end of kindergarten, according to research in Developmental Psychology. Researchers studied 2,581 children from low-income families enrolled in kindergarten in the United States, about half of whom attended a preschool program. The researchers assessed the children on their academic skills (e.g., literacy and math), executive functioning (e.g., working memory, flexible thinking, and self control), and socio-emotional skills at the start of kindergarten and again in the spring. They found that. preschool graduates entered kindergarten with stronger academic skills and executive functioning than those who did not attend preschool, though there was no difference in kindergarten teachers’ assessments of the two groups’ socio-emotional skills. Both groups continued to make progress through kindergarten, but by spring the differences between them had shrunk by about half, primarily because the children who never attended preschool made larger gains as compared with their classmates with preschool experience. (Monitor on Psychology)

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