Associations Between Public Preschool Attendance and Third Grade School Outcomes: Are There Lasting Benefits in a Post-COVID-19 Environment?

Associations Between Public Preschool Attendance and Third Grade School Outcomes: Are There Lasting Benefits in a Post-COVID-19 Environment?

Publication date: Jun 16, 2025

Using newly available data from Tulsa, Oklahoma-home of a renowned and much-studied universal public preschool program-we investigated associations between public preschool attendance and a wide range of third grade school administrative outcomes collected in the post-COVID-19 era. We explored associations between preschool attendance and school outcomes in our full sample of students (all of whom were from low-income households) as well as in our sizable subsample of dual language learners. Public preschool was unrelated to state standardized test scores, grade retention, and special education status. However, for dual language learners only, public preschool attendance predicted substantial reductions in third grade (post-COVID-19) absenteeism. Given skyrocketing rates of absenteeism when schools reopened after COVID-19-rates that are especially large for students from low-income and minoritized backgrounds such as those in our sample-these results hold special importance and may suggest a potentially overlooked response to a rising problem.

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Concepts Keywords
Absenteeism achievement
Covid at-risk students
Preschool bilingual/bicultural
Skyrocketing child development
Tulsa correlational analysis
dual language learners
early childhood
econometric analysis
Head Start
pre-K
public preschool
regression analyses

Semantics

Type Source Name
disease MESH COVID-19
pathway REACTOME Reproduction
drug DRUGBANK Coenzyme M
disease IDO country
disease MESH absence status
disease IDO quality
disease IDO intervention
disease MESH limited English proficiency
drug DRUGBANK Spinosad
disease MESH marital status
disease IDO history
drug DRUGBANK Timonacic
drug DRUGBANK Aspartame
disease IDO process
drug DRUGBANK Ranitidine
drug DRUGBANK 5-amino-1 3 4-thiadiazole-2-thiol
disease MESH autism
disease MESH intellectual disability
disease MESH visual impairments
disease MESH learning disabilities
drug DRUGBANK Nonoxynol-9
disease MESH home environments
drug DRUGBANK Etodolac
drug DRUGBANK Indoleacetic acid
drug DRUGBANK Isoxaflutole

Original Article

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