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

Oct 15, 2026

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Investigating newly available Tulsa, Oklahoma data from a universal public preschool program, the study examines associations between public preschool attendance and diverse third-grade administrative outcomes in the post–COVID-19 period. Findings show no relationship with state standardized test scores, grade retention, or special education status in the full low-income sample. For dual language learners only, public preschool attendance predicts sizable reductions in third-grade absenteeism, a key mediator of academic and social risk after reopening.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages19

Reading Time48 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Study focus and context

Absenteeism as an underexplored outcome

Dual language learners and research gap

AERA Open January-December 2025, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 1–19 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584251339413 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2025. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) Associations Between Public Preschool Attendance and Third Grade School Outcomes: Are There Lasting Benefits in a Post-COVID-19 Environment? Anna D. Johnson Douglas Hummel-Price Anne Martin Sophie Rodosky Georgetown University Diane Horm University of Oklahoma Deborah A. Phillips Georgetown University 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. Keywords: early childhood, achievement, at-risk students, bilingual/bicultural, child development, correlational analysis, econometric analysis, regression analyses, public preschool, pre-K, Head Start, dual language learners Introduction There is widespread consensus that public preschool programs support children’s language, literacy, and math skills at the end of preschool or the start of kindergarten but ongoing debate about the extent to which preschool benefits sustain or fade throughout the elementary school years (Phillips, Lipsey, et al., 2017). Many preschool evaluation studies stop after kindergarten, precluding the possibility of detecting longer-term effects. Studies that have followed students beyond kindergarten have yielded mixed findings regarding persistence versus fade-out of preschool effects (Phillips, Lipsey, et al., 2017) . Most of these studies have focused on state standardized math and reading test scores and, to a lesser extent, on grade retention and special education placement (Andrews et al., 2012; Ansari et al., 2017; Barnett et al., 2013, 2018; Courtney et al., 2023; Durkin et al., 2022; Early et al., 2019; Gormley et al., 2018; Gray-Lobe et al., 2021; Hill et al., 2015; Lipsey et al., 2018; Peisner-Feinberg & Schaaf, 2010; Phillips et al., 2016; Watts et al., 2023; Weiland et al., 2020, 2021) . Less attention has been paid to another highly consequential school outcome—absenteeism. This is a substantial shortcoming because chronic absenteeism in elementary school predicts poorer academic and social outcomes (Chang & Romero, 2008; Gottfried, 2014; Romero & Lee, 2007; Wei, 2024) and higher absenteeism in subsequent grades (Connolly & Olson, 2012; Ehrlich et al., 2018) . Moreover, chronic absenteeism is at an Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License ([https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages ([https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage](https:/

FAQs

What data and setting are used to study preschool benefits?

The study uses newly available administrative data from Tulsa, Oklahoma, linked to a long-studied universal public preschool program and focuses on post–COVID-19 outcomes in third grade.

Do public preschool attendance effects persist in standard school outcomes?

For the overall low-income sample, public preschool is unrelated to state standardized test scores, grade retention, and special education status.

How do results differ for dual language learners?

Among dual language learners only, public preschool attendance predicts substantial reductions in post–COVID-19 third-grade absenteeism.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Pentious