Final Report: Implementation and Pilot Study
4
Executive Summary
The PreK On My Way ™ (PKOMW) evaluation consists of four phases: A case study, implementation study, pilot study and impact study. The current report presents findings from the pilot study (phase 3). The PKOMW curriculum supports PreK students in developing math, literacy, and language skills through research based, standards-aligned, interactive, and scaffolded instructional practices. It is designed to center purposeful play, socioemotional supports, hands-on activities, and culturally relevant reading materials for four and five-year-olds entering Kindergarten. The PKOMW curriculum is also designed to support multilingual learners through authentic, culturally relevant, Spanish language texts and asset-based language supports. The pilot study was a small-scale test of the methods and procedures that we plan to use in phase 4 of the evaluation, the impact study. A summary of the key study findings and recommendations from the pilot study are presented below.
Pilot Study Key Findings and Recommendations
The pilot study findings showed that:
Sample of students. Students in the PKOMW and comparison groups were similar across some demographic variables, such as age, sex, and ethnicity. But there were also some differences. The comparison group had a higher proportion of dual language learners (DLLs). Additionally, students in PKOMW classrooms came from families with significantly higher household income and had parents with higher levels of education. Both groups had the same number of children who were DLL, but the comparison classrooms had a marginally higher ( p < .10) proportion of DLL children. The term "dual language learner" (DLL) applies to young students under eight years old who are acquiring proficiency in two languages, while "multilingual language learner" refers to those learning more than two languages (Park et al., 2018). These learners form a diverse group with evolving language proficiencies influenced by exposure and support (Castro et al., 2013). All children who spoke a language other than English at home were screened using the Simon Says and Art Show subtests of the preLAS 2000 (Duncan & DeAvila, 1998). The results showed that children classified as Dual Language Learners (DLL) in the comparison group scored higher than those in the PKOMW classrooms, although the differences were not statistically significant. Classroom setting. Classrooms that implemented the PKOMW curriculum ( M = 17.10, SD = 6.56) had fewer students in their classrooms than those in comparison classrooms ( M = 19.48, SD = 1.06). Children in classrooms that implemented PKOMW outperformed those in the comparison group in expressive and receptive vocabulary and math. Analyses that included all students and did not control for demographic or other characteristics showed that students in PKOMW classrooms outperformed those in the comparison group in expressive (Expressive One-Word Vocabulary Test – 4; Frauwirth et al., 2017) (PKOMW M = 97.68, PKOMW SD = 16.09; Comparison M = 84.18, Comparison SD = 4.83) and receptive vocabulary (PPVT-5; Dunn, 2019) (PKOMW M = 90.33, PKOMW SD = 19.34;
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