H istorically, kindergarten marked children’s!rst entry into formal, primarily public education in the United States. However, increasingly children are coming to kindergarten having spent some time in structured, center-based care. For example, 63.8 % of children born in 2001 were enrolled in a center-based program the year prior to kindergarten entry (Flanagan & McPhee 2009). Kindergarten might not mark children’s entry into formal, structured classrooms, but it continues to be the!rst year for which children’s experiences are governed by policies set within the public K–12 education system.1 As a result, kindergarten provides a bridge within early childhood, linking a time during which children spend their years in a wide range of settings prior to kindergarten, and primary education, where children spend their days in a more structured setting learning with their agemates from a common teacher, teaching to a shared set of expectations and standards (at least within classrooms, districts, and typically, states). It also marks the “line in the sand ” between early learning standards (for children 5 and younger) that address all domains to primary and secondary education (K–12) standards, which focus on academic content. Although the early childhood period spans birth through

Nearly all school-age children in the United States attend kindergarten, and approximately three-quarters of kindergarten students are in full-day classrooms. While there have been dramatic increases in provision of and participation in full-day kindergarten, there is little evidence on the impact and cost-effectiveness of such programs and policies, particularly as compared to other types of investments in early childhood. Employing data from districts assigning students to kindergarten settings by lottery, I test the impact of full-versus half-day assignment on students' literacy skills at the end of the kindergarten year, generating the first evidence based on random assignment of children to kindergarten type. The results indicate that full-day assignment has a substantial, positive effect (0.31 standard deviations) when comparing students across treatment conditions within the same school. In particular, I find that Hispanic students realize large full-day kindergarten effects (0.70 s.d.), and notably this impact is statistically different than that experienced by students who are not Hispanic. Students who enter kindergarten with low literacy skills also experience particularly large gains. These heterogeneous treatment effects have implications for narrowing or closing the achievement gap early in formal schooling, and in fact the impact for Hispanic students constitutes approximately 70 percent of the control group's end-of-kindergarten ethnicity gap. Using rough cost measures, a simple cost-effectiveness analysis suggests a range of effect sizes from 0.07-0.20 s.d. per thousand dollars of spending, which exceeds similar calculations from experimental evidence on other early investments. Given the positive evidence on program effects, I discuss implications of the study design and findings for policy, including targeted versus universal provision of full-day kindergarten. 1 Abstract Nearly all school-age children in the United States attend kindergarten, and approximately three-quarters of kindergarten students are in full-day classrooms. While there have been dramatic increases in provision of and participation in full-day kindergarten, there is little evidence on the impact and cost-effectiveness of such programs and policies, particularly as compared to other types of investments in early childhood. EdPolicyWorks Employing data from districts assigning students to kindergarten settings by lottery, I test the impact of full-versus half-day assignment on students' literacy skills at the end of the kindergarten year, generating the first evidence based on random assignment of children to kindergarten type. The results indicate that full-day assignment has a substantial, positive effect (0.31 standard deviations) when comparing students across treatment conditions within the same school. In particular, I find that Hispanic students realize large full-day kindergarten effects (0.70 s.d.), and notably this impact is statistically different than that experienced by students who are not Hispanic. Students who enter kindergarten with low literacy skills also experience particularly large gains. These heterogeneous treatment effects have implications for narrowing or closing the achievement gap early in formal schooling, and in fact the impact for Hispanic students constitutes approximately 70 percent of the control group's end-of-kindergarten ethnicity gap. Using rough cost measures, a simple cost-effectiveness analysis suggests a range of effect sizes from 0.07-0.20 s.d. per thousand dollars of spending, which exceeds similar calculations from experimental evidence on other early investments. Given the positive evidence on program effects, I discuss implications of the study design and findings for policy, including targeted versus universal provision of full-day kindergarten.

During the past half century, there has been a trend towards increasing the minimum age a child must reach before entering school in the United States. States have accomplished this by moving the school entry cutoff date earlier in the school year. The evidence presented in this paper shows that these law changes increased human capital accumulation and hence adult wages. More specifically, shifting the school entry cutoff up by one month (i.e. from January 1 to December 1) increases average white male hourly earnings by approximately one percent. We further show that the increased human capital accumulation that generates this wage increase comes from within grade skill accumulation rather than increased educational attainment. Perhaps most importantly, there is some preliminary evidence that the entire cohort of children benefits from the cutoff change, not just those whose entry is delayed by a year

Educational attainment is one of the most impor-tant determinants of health.1,2 Conversely, incom-plete or poor-quality education can jeopardize a child’s prospects for health and well-being. This review investigates the potential of full-day kindergarten (FDK) to foster the public health goal of health equity, with a focus on low-income and racial/ethnic-minority popula-tions in the U.S.

does early childhood care and education affect cognitive development? An international review of the effects of early

Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. IZA Discussion Paper No. 6149