Full‐Day versus Half‐Day Kindergarten: In Which Program Do Children Learn More?

Do children learn more in full‐day kindergartens than half‐day programs? If full‐day kindergarten increases learning, are kindergartners in some schools particularly advantaged by their full‐day experience? We address these questions with a nationally representative sample of over 8,000 kindergartners and 500 U.S. public schools that participated in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten Cohort. More than half of kindergartners experience full‐day programs, which are most commonly available to less‐advantaged children. Using multilevel (HLM) methods, we show that children who attend schools that offer full‐day programs learn more in literacy and mathematics than their half‐day counterparts. We also explore differential effectiveness in some school settings.