How Do Combinations of Transition Activities Available to Children and Families Predict Successful Kindergarten Transitions?

ABSTRACT

Research Findings: The transition to kindergarten can be challenging for children and families. Research shows that some transition activities implemented by elementary schools can have small positive associations with children’s outcomes. Examining the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Class of 2011 dataset (N= 13813), we explored whether children and families had access to different combinations of transition activities and whether those combinations were associated with child and family outcomes. Using latent class analysis, we found four distinct groups based on teacher and parent reports. Two groups had opportunities for engaging in many transition activities, while the other two groups had fewer transition activities offered – particularly face-to-face experiences. Children from low-income households were more likely to experience fewer types of transition activities, and children from higher-income households were more likely to experience a more comprehensive set of transition activities. Group membership predicted children’s initial adjustment to kindergarten, parent involvement in school, and parent satisfaction with the elementary school. Practice or Policy: These findings suggest that more work is needed to develop policies and practices that ensure children and families with low incomes have transition supports available to them. This research also highlights the importance of considering how transition supports benefit parents, not just children.

The transition to kindergarten is a major milestone, but it can also create significant challenges for children and their families as they navigate new roles, environments, expectations, relationships, and responsibilities (Rimm-Kaufman & Pianta, 2000). Kindergarten also requires greater levels of independence on the part of the child, new expectations related to adhering to school-based routines and formal instruction, and focusing for longer periods of time. For families, it is a time for establishing new relationships with teachers and possibly encountering new curricula and school or classroom expectations. In addition, families may experience new stressors tied to a desire to see their child(ren) thrive academically and socially in this new educational context. Thus, it is no wonder that smooth transitions to kindergarten play a vital role in supporting families’ engagement in their children’s transition and engagement in school (e.g., Harbin et al., 2007; Rosenkoetter et al., 2009) and supporting children’s school success (e.g., Ladd et al., 2000; Pianta & Walsh, 1996; Rimm-Kaufman & Pianta, 2000). Existing research has explored individual promising practices for supporting successful transitions. However, transition practices typically do not occur in isolation and little research has examined the ways in which they co-occur from the perspective of both teachers and parents. The present study utilized the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Class of 2011 (ECLS-K:2011) dataset (N= 13813) and assessed: (1) the different combinations of kindergarten transition supports available to families by elementary schools; (2) whether families and children with different background characteristics were more or less likely to receive different combinations of supports; and (3) whether experiencing certain combinations of transition practices was related to positive family and child outcomes in the kindergarten year. This work adds to the field’s understanding of how families may have differential activities provided by elementary schools for transition supports and therefore differential access to the potential benefits of those combinations of transition supports for both children and families.

Theoretical Framework

Successful navigation of the transition to kindergarten can be supported by school policies and practices, such as family orientations, classroom visits, and coordination with children’s home and former preschool settings (Cook & Coley, 2017, 2020; Kagan & Tarrant, 2010; LoCasale-Crouch et al., 2008; Schulting et al., 2005). A successful transition to kindergarten has the potential to create positive outcomes by setting the tone for children’s and families’ ongoing relationships with learning, peers, teachers, and the school system more broadly (Claessens et al., 2009; Dockett et al., 2011; Ladd et al., 2000). This, in turn, could provide a strong foundation for positive adjustment and learning trajectories through the school years (Eckert et al., 2008; Ladd et al., 2000).

This study is guided by Rimm-Kaufman and Pianta’s (2000) ecological transition to kindergarten framework, which posits that children’s transitions to kindergarten are influenced by social relationships and the child’s surrounding contexts. This theoretical framework emphasizes the importance of children’s peers, homes, schools, and neighborhoods in directly and/or indirectly affecting the child. The transition to kindergarten is a complex and dynamic process molded by and contingent upon a multitude of child and family experiences, which are constantly evolving.

Moreover, recent work in the field has emphasized that transitions do not reflect a one-time set of activities undertaken before the start of the school year, but rather an extended process that occurs over time (Bohan-Baker & Little, 2004; Ehrlich et al., 2021; Petriwskyj et al., 2005; Rimm-Kaufman & Pianta, 2000; Rosenkoetter et al., 2009; Stormont et al., 2005). This includes experiences before and during kindergarten intended to support families and children who experience various types of early care and education (ECE) programs (or none at all) in the year prior to kindergarten. Examples of transition activities may include elementary school- or teacher-initiated contact with families and/or children through home visits, phone calls, and invitations to visit the kindergarten classroom that may occur before or during kindergarten (Bohan-Baker & Little, 2004), and are the focus of this study. Understood in this way, transitions to kindergarten involve the ongoing and shared responsibility of children, families, teachers, and administrators across a range of settings, including ECE, elementary schools, home, and communities. In particular, ongoing communication between families and schools, and family involvement in school, are critical contextual factors and outcomes of successful transitions to school (Cook et al., 2018; Rimm-Kaufman & Pianta, 2000; Schulting et al., 2005).

Activities for Supporting the Transition

There are a range of common practices initiated by elementary schools in an effort to support successful kindergarten transitions. Transition practices have been categorized in the literature in different ways. For example, some researchers have categorized transition practices as horizontal compared to vertical practices. Horizontal practices include those focused on coordinating simultaneous services that children receive from different entities such as child care and health services, while vertical services capture those that occur at different time points such as prekindergarten and kindergarten (Kagan & Neuman, 1998). Another categorization comes from the National Center on Early Childhood Development, Teaching, and Learning, which organizes transition practices based on who is being connected: (1) Early childhood program and School, (2) Child and School, (3) Family and School, and (4) Community and School (Office of Head Start, 2020). In other studies, transition practices have been categorized as individualized practices before school starts, whole class practices before school starts, individualized practices after school starts, whole class practices after school starts, and coordination practices (Rous et al., 2010), or low-intensity practices compared to high-intensity practices (Rous et al., 2010). All of these categorizations are helpful in thinking about different practices; however, in this study, we use categories that best capture the types of practices we were able to study using the ECLS-K data. Broadly, the activities assessed in this study are categorized as: a) information sharing; b) opportunities for face-to-face contact; and c) scheduling adjustments to the start of the school year (i.e., staggered entry and shortened days).

Much of the transition literature has captured teachers’ most and least common transition practices. For example, Curby et al. (2018) survey of almost 500 randomly selected kindergarten teachers across the country about the transition practices they use found that kindergarten teachers were most likely to send information home (89%) or host an open house (82%). On the other end of frequency, only 5% of teachers reported conducting home visits at the beginning of the year (see also Cook & Coley, 2017; Little, 2017; Zulfiqar et al., 2018). Abry et al. (2018) found similar frequencies in the use of transition practices reported by kindergarten teachers of children who had previously attended Head Start: 87% reported sending home information about the kindergarten program, 79% reported inviting families to attend an orientation prior to the start of school, 75% reported inviting families and/or children to visit prior to the start of school, 39% reported arranging for preschoolers to spend time in the classroom, and 14% reported offering shortened school days at the start of school (see also Cook & Coley, 2020).

Improving Our Understanding of Transition Experiences

Existing research is limited in how transition practices have been operationalized; they have largely been examined as individual practices or by taking the sum of individual practices (e.g., Cook & Coley, 2017, 2019; Little, 2017; LoCasale-Crouch et al., 2008; Schulting et al., 2005). However, evidence suggests that many schools engage in multiple transition practices (Curby et al., 2018) and that some types of transition activities may have a greater influence on family and child outcomes, as described above. Thus, prior studies ignore the role of combinations of transition practices that children and families are likely to experience. Summing or averaging across multiple practices does not allow for a nuanced analysis of combinations of practices.

In this study, rather than counting the number of transition activities – which positions the transition activities at the center of the analyses – we use a more “person-centered” analytical approach (latent class analysis [LCA]) to understand the constellation of transition activities that are offered to children and their families. In other words, we look at the more common groupings or combinations of transition activities reported by families and teachers for individual students (representing, in effect, a student-centered approach to understanding what types of transition activities are available). In research that centers each individual activity, researchers explore each activity independently as a predictor of relevant outcomes. In contrast, taking this person-centered approach acknowledges that not everyone experiences the same sets of activities and allows us to use data to better identify the most comment sets of activities offered for individuals. We can then associate those groupings of transition activities with potential outcomes. The use of this person-centered approach in education research using large-scale nested datasets such as the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (e.g., Alameda Lawson & Lawson, 2018; Hair et al., 2006; Halle et al., 2012) – and even more specifically in understanding children’s transition to kindergarten (e.g., Lee & Bierman, 2016; Slicker et al., 2021) – has garnered increased attention in recent years. Another strength of this approach to address our research questions is that we can include reports of transition activities from multiple reporters and better understand the combinations of experiences using a person-centered approach. This allows us to not only see what teachers are reporting offering to children and families, but also which services families report accessing.

In addition, while transition supports are often couched as supporting children, kindergarten transitions can also require substantial adjustments for families. Families’ relationships with schools may be qualitatively different in kindergarten than in ECE programs (McIntyre et al., 2007), and the shift in expectations and routines for both children and families can lead to increased family stress and anxiety around children’s school readiness (DeCaro & Worthman, 2011; Hatcher et al., 2012). It is thus unsurprising that families have expressed that they value information that helps them navigate the logistics of the transition, understand and prepare for what the kindergarten setting will be like, and identify concrete ways they can be involved in the transition process (Malsch et al., 2011). Indeed, parents want to be more involved (McIntyre et al., 2007). Despite the crucial role of families during the transition, much of the existing research on transition practices relies on teacher reports of their practices only, rather than incorporating families’ reports on which practices were made available to them. Examining both together would provide a more robust understanding of the transition supports a family experiences.

The current study addresses the limitations described above by first examining whether there are common combinations of transition experiences for children and families in the United States that could be grouped into distinct transition activity groups. These transition experiences were reported by both teachers and parents. We used both reports of transition activities from the kindergarten teacher and the parent in order to capitalize on the wealth of data available through the ECLS-K dataset. This strategy also allowed us to gain a fuller picture of the transition activities available for families.

Literature also suggests that transition supports vary by the school children attend and that families and children with different backgrounds may experience different transition activities. For example, access to and participation in transition activities – as well as opportunities for family involvement throughout the kindergarten year – vary by a range of school demographic characteristics, such as proportion of low-income families, number of English Language Learners, and whether the school was public or private (Garber et al., 2022; Wildenger & McIntyre, 2011). While children in the same schools may be given similar opportunities for transition supports, it does not mean all families are able to access them in the same way. For example, if schools do not offer events at days and times that work for families with different work schedules and flexibility, or do not use modes of communication that families find accessible, they may not have the same access to the offered opportunities. Specifically, families with fewer financial resources tend to experience fewer transition activities than families with more resources (McIntyre et al., 2007; Wildenger & McIntyre, 2011). Such differential experiences may be problematic given that transition supports have been found to be particularly effective for children from lower socio-economic (SES) backgrounds (Cooper et al., 2010; LoCasale-Crouch et al., 2008; Schulting et al., 2005). However, research has not examined differential transition experiences in light of combined transition supports. This study extends the research on differential access to transition supports by asking whether children and families with different background characteristics are exposed to different combinations of transition supports. We examined how children with different characteristics (e.g., socio-economic backgrounds, prior Head Start attendance, race/ethnicity, dual language learner status) were represented within these distinct transition activity groups.

How Combinations of Transition Practices Support Improved Kindergarten Outcomes

Supporting Child Outcomes

This study seeks to understand how different combinations of transition supports provided by elementary schools may be associated with child and family outcomes. The research summarized above provides some evidence that individual transition practices may support improved adjustment and ongoing learning for children. However, inconsistencies in findings across samples indicate a need for more research. For example, in one study examining transition practices in the ECLS-K 1998 cohort, Schulting et al. (2005) found that more kindergarten transition practices were related to increased academic skills in kindergarten, yet analyses of the ECLS-K 2011 cohort found no significant relations between kindergarten teacher-reported transition practices and child outcomes (Little, 2017). Analyses with similar transition practices in the ECLS-Birth cohort of 2001 found that more transition practices were related to prosocial skills in kindergarten when controlling for prior skills before kindergarten, yet did not find a relationship with academic outcomes (Cook & Coley, 2017). Almost all of these studies focused on data provided by teachers. These prior studies had mixed results, perhaps because they looked at individual practices rather than combinations of experiences for children and their families. The current analyses focus on the more recent cohort of the ECLS-K (2011) and seek to add to our understanding of transition experiences by including parent reports on transition supports (in addition to teacher reports). This work also explores how the combinations of those transition supports are related to child outcomes, rather than the associations between individual practices and child outcomes.

Family Outcomes

Family involvement – as its own outcome – is important to study because research shows that family involvement can be related to positive child outcomes (i.e., it is a potential mechanism through which improved child adjustment and learning may occur). Family-school connections during the transition to kindergarten and first years of school are important for children’s development and school success (Dearing et al., 2017; National Academies of Science, 2016; Pomerantz et al., 2007).While limited, there is some research that suggests efforts to involve families in transition activities may be associated with higher levels of family involvement in children’s schooling during the kindergarten year (Galindo & Sheldon, 2012; Schulting et al., 2005). Transition activities likely support ongoing family involvement by influencing families’ beliefs, expectations, and behaviors related to school readiness and home-based support (Entwisle & Alexander, 1993; Galindo & Sheldon, 2012; Puccioni et al., 2020; Taylor et al., 2004). In a randomized controlled study (N = 576) to assess the effectiveness of transition-to-school supports for families, Giallo et al. (2010) found that the program not only increased families’ knowledge about the transition process, but also increased families’ confidence and self-efficacy, which was, in turn, associated with increased family involvement in children’s learning. In terms of the transition to kindergarten, there is also some evidence that most parents seek to be involved with school (McIntyre et al., 2007).

Given the important role that families play in children’s transitions and adjustment to kindergarten, this study also focuses on understanding the associations of transition practice combinations on both child and family outcomes. The importance of family involvement can be seen in kindergarten teachers’ perceptions of how families can play a key role in supporting successful transitions. We examine academic, social-emotional, and adjustment outcomes for children along with parent involvement and parent satisfaction with their child’s kindergarten school as outcomes.

Present Study

The current study addresses limitations in the literature by examining combinations of transition activities, differential access to transition activities, and how these transition experiences are related to family and child outcomes. Specifically, we address the following research questions:

(RQ 1):

Are there common combinations of transition experiences for children and families in the United States that can be grouped into distinct transition activity groups? Since prior research has not considered combinations of practices using a person-centered approach before, we did not have a prior hypothesis about which transition experiences may group together.

(RQ 2):

Are children and families with different background characteristics exposed to different combinations of transition supports? We examine how children with different characteristics (e.g., socio-economic backgrounds, race/ethnicity, dual language learner status) were represented within these distinct transition activity groups. We hypothesized that there would be multiple patterns of transition experiences for children in the sample.

(RQ 3):

Do children and families exposed to different transition supports have significantly different outcomes during the kindergarten year? We hypothesized that membership in different transition activity groups would be associated with different child and family outcomes, with transition groups that include a wider range of practices associated with positive parent outcomes (e.g., higher satisfaction with the child’s school and higher school-based parent involvement) and positive child outcomes in kindergarten.

Method

Data

The ECLS-K:2011 is a longitudinal study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education to better understand early school experiences. The sample is nationally representative of kindergarten children enrolled in public and private schools in the 2010–11 academic year, providing a rich pool of information from children, teachers, administrators, parents, and caregivers on a wide variety of topics. Of interest to this analysis are the teacher and parent reports of transition activities before or during the kindergarten year, parent- and teacher-reported child outcomes, direct child assessments, child and family characteristics, and community/school-level characteristics (Tourangeau et al., 2018).

Sample

The full sample included 18,174 children who attended 1,328 schools. ECLS-K:2011 surveys used a three-stage sampling process to produce a representative sample of all U.S. kindergarten students in the fall of 2010. The country was divided into primary sampling units (PSUs) and 90 PSUs were sampled during the first stage; public and private schools with kindergarten programs were sampled in the second stage, and children were sampled from selected schools in the last phase. Our final analytic sample (N = 13,813) included all children who had child assessment data (at least one of three assessments in both the fall and spring of kindergarten) and some kindergarten teacher and parent survey data. Cases where a full teacher or parent survey were missing were dropped from the analyses. See Table 1 for sample characteristics.

Table 1. Sample characteristics.

Characteristic	Full ECLS-K: 2011 National Sample	Analytic Sample
Sample N	18,174	13,813
Survey weighted population	4,053,252	4,053,154
Mean age in months	66.08	66.17
Race
White	52.31%	52.44%
Black	13.27%	13.45%
Latinx	24.97%	24.31%
Other	9.45%	9.79%
Sex
Male	51.61%	51.70%
Female	48.39%	48.30%
Dual language Status	25.60%	23.18%
Special education status	20.62%	21.96%
SES Quartile 1 (0–25)	25.00%	24.34%
SES Quartile 2 (26–50)	26.21%	25.82%
SES Quartile 3 (51–75)	24.73%	25.37%
SES Quartile 4 (76–100)	24.05%	24.47%
Mean district composite poverty level	19.80	19.68
Urbanicity of elementary school
City school	32.69%	31.71%
Suburb school	33.17%	33.37%
Town school	10.78%	10.98%
Rural school	23.35%	23.94%
Private school	10.92%	11.28%
Public school	89.08%	88.72%
% Non-white students in school attended	45.89%	46.16%
Size of school attended
0–149	4.73%	4.75%
150–299	11.60%	11.23%
300–499	30.90%	32.03%
500–749^+	37.01%	35.80%
750+	15.77%	16.19%
Child attends half-day kindergarten	18.00%	17.33%

All percentages for the analytic sample use the appropriate analytic weights for our study. The full sample column utilizes the corresponding weights for the full study sample (W1P0, W1P0PSU, W1P0STR). The analytic sample columns use appropriate analytic weights for the data used in this study (W2C_2P_2TZ, W2C_2P_2TZSTR, W2C_2P_2TZ0). The weighting techniques take into account the nested nature of the data by including the primary sampling unit and strata.

Measures

This study used variables of kindergarten teacher and parent reports of transition activities; parent and child outcomes; and child, family, and community and school characteristics as control variables.

For Latent Class Analysis (LCA) Transition Grouping Analyses

We used kindergarten teacher reports of kindergarten transition activities that were conducted before or at the beginning of the school year for children and families in their classroom. We also included parent reports of kindergarten transition activities as reported in the fall of the kindergarten year, including whether or not they received information from their child’s kindergarten teacher or school. In the fall of kindergarten, teachers and parents were surveyed about transition practices. Teachers were asked to respond yes or no to seven items related to a set of transition activities, and parents were asked four items. Teachers were asked if they sent information home about the transition to kindergarten; whether preschoolers spent time in kindergarten classrooms; if school days were shortened at the beginning of the year; if parents and children visited classrooms before the start of the year; if teachers visited homes, schools or held parent orientation; and if teachers used staggered kindergarten entry plans. Parents were asked if they received information from their child’s kindergarten teacher or school about how to prepare their child for kindergarten, topics and skills that are part of kindergarten, what to do if a child is late or absent, and how to contact teachers/the school to discuss concerns about their child.

These 11 binary items fit in the broad categories of information sharing, opportunities for face-to-face interactions, and scheduling changes in the beginning of the school year. They were used in latent class analyses to estimate transition activity groups representing different combinations of commonly implemented transition practices reported by both kindergarten teachers and parents. Incorporating both teacher and parent reports of transition practices, we gain a more nuanced picture of different types of practices being offered and received by families, not just what is reported by teachers. See Table 2 for descriptive statistics.

Table 2. ECLS-K transition activity items descriptive statistics.

Item	% Yes
Teacher-Reported Transition Activities
In some schools, certain activities are used to make the transition into kindergarten less difficult for children. Are any of the following done in your school?
I or someone at the school phone or send home information about the kindergarten program to parents	90.15
Parents and children visit kindergarten prior to the start of the school year	83.93
Parents come to the school for orientation prior to the start of the school year	80.14
Preschoolers spend some time in the kindergarten classroom	34.17
The school days are shortened at the beginning of the school year	9.85
Staggered school entry where kindergartners start the school year in smaller groups before meeting with the full class	10.99
I or another teacher visit the homes of the children at the beginning of the school year	2.85
Parent-Reported Transition Activities
Did your child’s school/teacher send home information about any of the following when the child started kindergarten:
… how to prepare your child for kindergarten?	78.53
… topics or skills that are part of the kindergarten program?	85.74
…what to do if your child will be late or absent from school?	91.09
…how to get in touch with the teacher or school staff to discuss concerns or questions about your child?	95.62

All data were collected in fall of the child’s kindergarten year. Analyses used appropriate analytic weights for the data used in this study (W2C_2P_2TZ, W2C_2P_2TZSTR, W2C_2P_2TZ0). The weighting techniques take into account the nested nature of the data by including the primary sampling unit and strata.

Parent Outcomes

Parent Involvement in School

We used parent’s reports of their involvement in their child’s kindergarten school, a scale of seven items from the parent survey administered in spring 2011. Parents were asked if they attended a PTA/PTO meeting, parent-teacher conference, school event, or parent advisory group; volunteered at school; served on school committee; or participated in fundraising. To generate the scale, we added together the number of “yes” reports. The parent involvement measure was used as a “count” variable in descriptive and regression analyses.

Parent Satisfaction with School

Parent satisfaction with school is a single item in the parent survey conducted in the spring of kindergarten. The item asked parents if they “are very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied or very dissatisfied” with the school their child currently attends. In the analyses we use this scale as reported by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

Child Outcomes

Child outcomes included both direct assessments and parent and teacher reports. Overall averages and standard errors or percentages for each outcome are provided in Table 3.

Table 3. Sample descriptive statistics for child and family outcomes.

	Mean/%	SE	Timeframe of Data Collection
Family Outcomes
Parent-Reported Parent Involvement (of 7 activities)	3.56	0.03	Spring
Parent Satisfaction			Spring
Very dissatisfied	1.06%	0.12
Somewhat dissatisfied	2.78%	0.24
Somewhat satisfied	20.72%	0.60
Very satisfied	75.44%	0.73
Child Outcomes
Academic Achievement
Fall Reading (T-score)	54.33	0.24	Fall
Gains in Reading, Fall to Spring	14.85	0.22	Fall, Spring
Fall Math (T-score)	35.81	0.30	Fall
Gains in Math, Fall to Spring	14.20	0.22	Fall, Spring
Social Skills
Fall Teacher-Rated Social Skills (T-score)	50.03	0.21	Fall
Gains in Teacher-Rated Social Skills, Fall to Spring	0.11	0.01	Fall, Spring
Initial School Adjustment
Initial School Adjustment (IRT score from frequency scale on 6 items; standardized to T-score)	49.89	0.12	Fall

T-scores are standardized scores with a mean of 50 and standard deviation of 10. Analyses used appropriate analytic weights for the data used in this study (W2C_2P_2TZ, W2C_2P_2TZSTR, W2C_2P_2TZ0). The weighting techniques take into account the nested nature of the data by including the primary sampling unit and strata.

Academic Skills

Children’s literacy and math skills were measured with direct assessments administered in the fall and spring of kindergarten. Fall assessments were conducted between August and mid-December, and spring assessments occurred between March and June. We used the IRT scale scores as they are appropriate for analyzing the correlations among child, family, and school variables, and fall and spring scores are on the same metric for literacy and math, respectively. The reliability of reading scores in the overall study was α = .95in the fall of kindergarten and α = .95in the spring (calculated by NCES, Tourangeau et al., 2018). The overall reliability of math scores was α = .92 in the fall and α = .94in the spring (Tourangeau et al., 2018). We generated gain scores for reading and math by taking the difference between the spring and fall assessment scores.

Social Skills

Social skills were measured as part of teacher reports of children administered at the beginning and end of kindergarten. To generate a teacher-reported social skill child outcome, we averaged teacher survey items to create a scale score. This was converted to a standardized T-score, and again generated a gain score for an end-of-year outcome.

Initial School Adjustment

Initial school adjustment was measured as part of the fall parent survey, which included the following six survey items. Does/is the child: “complain about school,” “pretend to be sick” to get out of going to school, upset about going to school, report good feelings about school, report liking their teacher, and eager to go to school. Cronbach’s alpha was calculated across the items (α =.70). We used an IRT graded response model to generate IRT scores for initial school adjustment, and resulting scores were converted to standardized T-scales.

Control Variables

Child and family characteristics were used to predict membership into each Transition Activity Group and as control variables in regression models. These characteristics include the following: child’s age at kindergarten entry, race/ethnicity, sex, a measure of family socio-economic status, whether the child speaks a language other than English at home, whether the child has ever been diagnosed with a disability, whether or not the child attended Head Start, and whether the child attended half- or full-day kindergarten. Family socio-economic status is based on an ECLS-K continuous variable. This NCES-generated indicator reflects the socio-economic status of the household at the time of data collection and includes five components: education and occupational prestige score for parents/guardians, and household income (Tourangeau et al., 2018). Head Start attendance prior to kindergarten was included because of Head Start’s focus on transition practices and regulations that require Head Start programs to provide transition activities to children and families prior to kindergarten entry (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2016). Controlling for prior Head Start attendance may adjust for differences in transition practices families received before kindergarten.

In analyses testing the association between transition activity groups and child and parent outcomes, we also used several community and school characteristics as control variables in our models. These included: percent of “nonwhite students” in the NCES data file, a measure of school district poverty level, total school enrollment, level of urbanicity, and whether the school is a public or private school. Based on existing evidence, we expected that these factors would be correlated with both transition practices and outcomes, and by including them in the model we aimed to estimate a more precise association of the transition practices and outcomes.

Analysis Plan

To address RQ 1, we conducted a LCA of binary indicators of both teacher- and parent-reported transition practices. This allowed us to identify the most common patterns of responses to the survey items. We estimated models with one to seven classes using Mplus and used weighted generalized least squares estimation. The models were weighted with a child-level weight that takes into account classroom and school data, as well as the inclusion of primary sampling unit and strata variables to account for the nested nature of the sampling design. Model fit was assessed using a triangulation of indices and theory. We determined that four classes was an appropriate number based on model fit and the ability to substantively interpret the emerging groupings (see Table 4). We paid especially close attention to picking a model with a higher entropy, while taking note of when the two information criteria began to level off. While five classes did have a higher entropy than four classes, we wanted our final selected number of classes to have strong theoretical underpinnings, and the addition of a fifth class did not add any value to our understanding of transition profiles; instead, it created two smaller classes with practically identical transition practices. Both teacher-reported and parent-reported transition practice variables were included in the LCA. Once an optimal number of groups was identified, the model provided the probability of each child being in each group; we then assigned children to their highest probability group. To address RQ 2, we used chi-square tests with survey weights in Stata 16 to determine if group classification percentages differed by child and family characteristics, including sex, race/ethnicity, SES, dual language status, special education status, age at kindergarten entry, parent education level, and parent work status, and whether children had attended Head Start in the year before kindergarten.

Table 4. Fit statistics for different numbers of classes.

# Classes	LL Ratio Chi^2 Value	AIC	BIC	Entropy	% Sample per Group
2	2850.431	98745.585	98931.891	0.739	85,15
3	2325.822	97307.352	97590.538	0.616	12,67,21
4	2147.877	96917.535	97297.601	0.703	7,21,59,13
5	1951.555	96655.346	97132.291	0.731	7,6,59,22,6
6	1795.939	96500.24	97074.064	0.725	22,5,58,5,2,7
7	1721.498	96410.245	97080.949	0.733	55,2,5,5,2,9,22

For RQ 3, we estimated the relationship between membership in different transition activity groups and parent and child outcomes using weighted regression analyses in Stata. We used ordinary least squares linear regression for continuous child outcomes, Poisson regression for parent involvement (count of seven activities) and probit regression for parent satisfaction. We estimated an unconditional model for each child and parent outcome along with a model including all child and family control variables. For all models, High Activities (Group 1) was the omitted (reference) group. All analyses were weighted using the appropriate child-level weight, primary sampling unit, and strata provided by ECLS-K dataset to account for the nested nature of the data. In addition, the models for research question 3 were respecified to include school-level fixed effects to check for robustness and ensure that there were not differences between schools that needed to be further accounted for.

Accounting for Missing Data, Nested Nature of the Data, & Multiple Comparisons

For all analyses, we addressed missing data using a weighting strategy and all analyses were weighted to be representative of the population of kindergarten children in 2011. Item level missing data ranged from 0–50%. Missing data were accounted for using survey weight adjustment techniques. The dataset we used contains several survey design weight variables that were modifications of a base weight. These adjust the survey statistics, so they are nationally representative of the population of interest and compensate for longitudinal unit non-response, select item non-response, and other design issues (Tourangeau et al., 2018). In addition to survey-designed non-response adjustments, for this study, we employed an inverse probability weighting (IPW) technique to compensate for sample members excluded from our analysis due to item non-response on our specific transition measures. This approach differs from imputation in that it does not fit a model to predict missing variable values, but instead uses a model to “up-weight” the actual responses of sample members. IPW can be used with large amounts of missing values, especially on categorical variables or if the covariance structure of missing values differs from the complete cases to a large extent as it does in this dataset (Seaman & White, 2013). Moreover, adjusting the typically-employed weights preserves the marginal distributions of the inference population, whereas imputation is not guaranteed to do so. Our process was to first code an appropriate child-level weight variable (that takes into account the child’s classroom and school data), indicating inclusion in our analysis (respondents that had data for all of our covariates and outcomes). Propensity strata were generated based on a logit model predicting being in the analytic sample (i.e., having no missing data on any outcomes or predictors), based on child race/ethnicity, gender, SES, and total school enrollment. Non-missing observations were then re-weighted within their given propensity strata. We then fit a logit model to predict inclusion in our analysis, creating 20 evenly-sized groups of respondents sorted on the probability of having no missing data. We then computed an adjustment factor for each group based on the ratio of the grouped sum of the previous weights (for those actually in the analytic sample versus the total), which allowed us to create our adjusted weight. The weight is increased for observations included in the analysis which are similar to observations that were omitted from the analysis. This new version of the weight was used for all analyses and incorporated into our analyses.

For research question 1, we used Mplus to conduct the LCA. Mplus uses a maximum likelihood approach to missing data. In addition, we set the data using the adjusted survey weight above as well as the primary sampling unit and strata to account for the nested nature of the data. For research questions 2 and 3, we used Stata to conduct descriptive and inferential statistics and regression models predicting outcomes of interest. We also survey set the data in Stata using the Taylor Series method that includes the adjusted survey weight described above as well as the survey design primary sampling unit and strata to account for the nested nature of the data. Across all models, when interpreting statistical significance, we adjusted for multiple comparisons using a Bonferroni correction (Dunn, 1961).

Results

Initial descriptive statistics indicate that teachers of the majority of children in the ECLS-K:2011 kindergarten sample reported sending information home about the kindergarten program (90%). A large proportion of parents reported receiving information from their child’s school or teacher about preparation for kindergarten (78%); topics that are part of the kindergarten program (86%); logistical information, such as what to do when a child is absent (91%); and how to get in touch with the teacher or school about concerns (96%). Other transition activities reported by teachers had more variability. Kindergarten teachers of more than 80% of children reported that parents and children visited kindergarten prior to school entry, and that parents attended an orientation before school started. Teachers of approximately 10% of children reported scheduling changes to support the transition, such as staggered school entry and shortened days at the beginning of the year, and very few reported conducting home visits (<3%; see Table 5).

Table 5. The estimated portion of children represented in each group, by child/family characteristics.

		High Activities	High Except Scheduling	Low Face-to-Face	Low Information	Chi^2 p- value
All	All	7.42%	58.64%	21.39%	12.55%
Sex	(a) Male	7.17%	59.07%	21.44%^b	12.32%	.3065
	(b) Female	7.70%	59.84%	20.07%^a	12.38%
Race/Ethnicity	(a) White	8.46%^bcd	66.21%^bcd	15.42%^bd	9.91%^bd	p < .0001***
	(b) Black	5.43%^ac	55.00%^acd	24.11%^ac	15.46%^acd
	(c) Latinx	6.34%^abd	46.63%^abd	30.55%^bd	16.48%^bd
	(d) Other	7.20%^ac	59.84%^abc	21.73%^ac	11.22%^abc
Dual Language Learner Status	(a) Yes	6.20%^b	48.55%^b	27.80%^b	17.45%^b	p < .0001***
	(b) No	7.74%^a	62.62%^a	17.92%^a	11.72%^a
Special Education Status	(a) Yes	6.71%^b	61.63%^b	18.14%^b	13.52%^b	.061
	(b) No	93.29%^a	38.37%^a	81.86%^a	86.48%^a
Head Start	(a) Head Start	5.99%^b	57.05%^b	23.22%^b	13.75%^b	.0586^+
	(b) Non-Head Start	7.66%^a	59.83%^a	19.59%^a	12.93%^a
Age at K Entry	Mean (months)	66.7	66.3	65.8	65.7	.006**
Family Income	(a) < $25k	7.40%^b	53.48%^b	24.38%^b	14.74%^b	p < .0001***
	(b) > $25k	7.87%^a	63.39%^a	18.13%^a	10.61%^a
SES Quartiles	(a) 1: 0–25^th percentile	7.05%	49.91%^bc	27.73%^cd	15.32%	p < .0001***
	(b) 2: 26^th-50^th percentile	6.72%	60.01%^a	21.19%^d	12.08%
	(c) 3: 51^st-75^th percentile	6.40%^d	64.20%^a	18.34%^a	11.06%
	(d) 4: 76^th-100^th percentile	9.63%^c	63.31%	16.03%^ab	11.04%
Parent Education Level	(a) No High School	6.50%^cd	47.79%^bcd	29.91%^bcd	15.79%^cd	p < .0001***
	(b) High School	6.47%^cd	57.01%^acd	22.83%^ad	13.69%^cd
	(c) Some College	7.34%^abd	60.60%^ab	20.86%^ad	11.20%^ab
	(d) Degree	8.50%^abc	64.49%^ab	15.66%^abc	11.35%^ab
Parent Work Status	(a) Full Time	7.63%	61.17%^cd	19.62%	11.59%^d	p < .0001***
	(b) Part Time	7.18%	63.67%^cd	16.66%^cd	12.50%
	(c) Not Working- Looking for work	7.82%	55.32%^abe	22.31%^b	14.55%
	(d) Not in Job Market	6.92%	54.87%^abe	22.86%^b	15.34%^a
	(e) No	7.93%	60.08%^cd	20.60%	11.40%
Half-Day Kindergarten	(a) Yes	5.62%^b	66.95%^b	17.74%^b	9.69%^b	.0507^+
	(b) No	22.04%^a	57.22%^a	22.04%^a	12.71%^a
School Size	(a) 0–149	4.81%^cd	62.89%^bcde	16.5%^bcde	15.75%^bcde
	(b) 150–299	7.04%^cd	60.04%^acd	19.46%^acd	13.46%^acd
	(c) 300–499	7.93%^ab	60.59%^abe	20.71%^ab	10.77%^abe	.9236
	(d) 500–749	7.50%^ab	59.24%^abe	20.90%^abe	12.37%^ace
	(e) 750+	7.77%	56.21%^acd	23.15%^ad	12.87%^acd
	(a) City	11.79%^cd	46.44%^c	24.72%^c	17.05%^cd
School Location	(b) Suburb	6.02%^c	62.31%^c	20.22%^c	11.45%^cd	p < .0001***
	(c) Town	4.95%^ab	75.02%^abd	11.87%^abd	8.17%^abd
	(d) Rural	4.87%^a	65.13%^c	20.49%^c	9.51%^abc
School Type	(a) Public	7.08%^b	59.08%^b	21.85%^b	11.99%^b	.0348*
	(b) Private	10.15%^a	62.28%^a	12.37%^a	15.20%^a
Percent of Non-White Students in School		39.11%	39.49%	58.50%	22.69%	p < .0001***
District Composite Poverty Level		19.82	18.22	22.04	22.70	.0019**

+ p  < .10;* p  < .05; ** p  < .01; *** p  < .001; ^{a, b, c, d, e} indicate significant (p  < .01) post-hoc differences within each group compared to the category identified by the corresponding letter. For example, within group 3 Low Face-to-Face, male is significantly different from “b” or female. Analyses used appropriate analytic weights for the data used in this study (W2C_2P_2TZ, W2C_2P_2TZSTR, W2C_2P_2TZ0). The weighting techniques take into account the nested nature of the data by including the primary sampling unit and strata.

Combining Transition Experiences into Distinct Transition Activity Groups (RQ1)

We examined whether families’ experiences of these individual transition practices grouped together into common combinations of activities. We found that there were four distinct transition activity groups. LCA models indicated a four class model was most appropriate for the data, based on three parameters: (a) lower Akaike information criterion (AIC = 96917.535) and Bayesian information criterion (BIC = 97297.601) values compared to the one, two, and three class models; (b) the entropy, and index of classification quality ranging from 0 to 1 with 1 indicating perfect fit, was relatively high (.703); and (c) the four class solution fit with theoretical underpinnings. The five, six, and seven class models did have lower AIC and BIC values, and higher entropy values, but the transition profiles generated with the additional classes were not substantively different from profiles in the four class solution. See Table 4.

Four groups described children with different transition experiences and characteristics. Children assigned to the High Activities and High Except Scheduling groups had the highest proportions of parents and teachers reporting that each of the transition activities occurred. Children in the Low Face-to-Face and Low Information groups seemed to experience some transition activities while having a lower likelihood of experiencing other types. Figure 1 provides a graph of each teacher- and parent-reported transition activity by group. Here, we describe them each in more detail.

Figure 1. Percentage of children with teachers or parents reporting a transition activity by transition activity group.

Group 1: High Activities

Children and their families in the High Activities group – roughly 7% of all children – experienced many types of transition activities compared to families in all other groups. They had high levels of teacher and parent reports that information was shared with families and high proportions of teachers reporting that school-family interactions occurred prior to kindergarten. These families also had the highest proportion of teachers who indicated that adjusted scheduling took place to support kindergarten transitions (i.e., shortened days at beginning of year and staggered school entry). Although reports of home visits were low across all groups, families in the High Activities group were most likely to experience them based on teacher reports.

Group 2: High Except Scheduling

Children in the High Except Scheduling group (21%) had similar experiences as those in the High Activities group, except they had lower proportions of teachers who reported shortened days, staggered school entry, and home visits. As with those in the High Activities group, higher proportions of families in this group reported receiving information about transitions from their child’s school or teacher (based on both teacher and parent reports) and participating in activities that promote school-family interactions to support the transition (based on teacher reports) compared to the remaining groups.

Group 3: Low Face-To-Face

The majority of children (59%) fell into the Low Face-to-Face group. This group had low proportions of face-to-face activities where families could interact with the school (i.e., kindergarten visits prior to school year and parents attending orientations). Children in this group had teachers who were less likely to send information about the kindergarten transition home to families, compared to all other groups. However, many parents in this group reported receiving relevant kindergarten transition information from their child’s teacher or school at a rate that was significantly higher than the parents in the Low Information group. A smaller proportion of these families experienced scheduling adjustments to support kindergarten transitions or home visits, as reported by teachers, compared to the High Activities and the High Except Scheduling groups.

Group 4: Low Information

This group, which represents 13% of children in the sample, had the lowest proportion of parents reporting they received information from their child’s school or teacher about how to prepare their child for kindergarten. This contrasts with teacher reports, whereby 90% of teachers reported sending information home to families. Here, it is important to note inconsistencies around how teacher- and parent-reported practices (e.g., sending/receiving information questions) were asked. Teachers were asked whether they sent information home to any parents about the transition. In contrast, parents were asked if they received specific information about the transition from either the teacher or school. Therefore, a teacher may indicate “yes” because, in general, they send information home; simultaneously, an individual parent may respond “no” because they (specifically) did not receive particular types of information. Children and families in this group had relatively moderate levels of reports by their teacher that face-to-face activities occurred. In other words, these children had more teachers reporting these activities than the Low Face-to-Face group, but less than the High Activities and High Except Scheduling groups. Families in this group also experienced low levels of scheduling adjustments and home visits to support transitions reported by teachers.

Characteristics of Children and Families in Each Transition Activity Group (RQ2)

Table 5 shows the results for RQ 2, where we examined group membership based on child and family characteristics. There were statistically significant differences between groups based on child and family characteristics. For example, children from the lowest SES quartile were significantly less likely to be assigned to the High Activities Except Scheduling group than any other SES quartile and were significantly more likely to be in the Low Face-to-Face group than children in the upper two SES quartiles. There were also statistically significant differences for children who were Dual Language Learners (DLLs). Compared to children who were not, DLLs were less likely to be in the High Activities Except Scheduling group (48.6% vs. 62.6%) and more likely to be in Low Face-to-Face group (27.8% vs 17.9%) and Low Information group (17.5% vs. 11.7%). Because of these differences in group membership for children and families with different background characteristics, we included all of the variables in Table 5 as control variables (except income and parent education, which are highly collinear with SES quartiles) in the analyses for research question three.

Group Membership Associated with Family and Child Outcomes (RQ3)

We present findings both in terms of weighted unconditional models and weighted regression models with control variables (Tables 6–8). In addition, we present effect size differences across groups based on marginal means for the final statistically significant models, showing findings that exceeded statistical significance after accounting for multiple comparisons (using a Bonferroni correction; Dunn, 1961). First calculating the marginal means allows us to identify predicted outcomes for the average child within each group; thus, they take into account the fact that different types of children and families were represented in each transition activity group. Figures 2–4 then show the differences between those marginal means in effect sizes. These figures represent the differences in predicted outcomes for families who were assigned to each group (after controlling for all other variables in the model).

Figure 2. Modeled parent-reported school-based parent involvement predicted by transition activity group (marginal means).

Note. The figure presents effect size differences for predicted marginal means that model the outcomes for the average child in each group based on regression models that include control variables. Therefore, each outcome takes into account that children with different characteristics were assigned to different groups. ***p < .001, all significant comparison were at a value where p < .008, which accounts for multiple comparisons using a Bonferroni correction. P-values are based on estimates from marginal means and differences across groups based on regression models with all control variables. Post-hoc tests revealed that all groups were significantly different from one another except for groups 1 and 2. Analyses used appropriate analytic weights for the data used in this study (W2C_2P_2TZ, W2C_2P_2TZSTR, W2C_2P_2TZ0). The weighting techniques take into account the nested nature of the data by including the primary sampling unit and strata.

Figure 3. Modeled parent satisfaction predicted by transition activity group (marginal means).

Note. The figure presents effect size differences for predicted marginal means that model the outcomes for the average child in each group based on regression models that include control variables. Therefore, each outcome takes into account that children with different characteristics were assigned to different groups. ***p < .001, all significant comparison were at a value where p < .008, which accounts for multiple comparisons using a Bonferroni correction. P-values are based on estimates from marginal means and differences across groups based on regression models with all control variables. Post-hoc tests revealed that group 4 was significantly different than groups 1, 2, and 3. Analyses used appropriate analytic weights for the data used in this study (W2C_2P_2TZ, W2C_2P_2TZSTR, W2C_2P_2TZ0). The weighting techniques take into account the nested nature of the data by including the primary sampling unit and strata.

Figure 4. Modeled child initial adjustment scores predicted by transition activity group (marginal means).

Note. The figure presents effect size differences for predicted marginal means that model the outcomes for the average child in each group based on regression models that include control variables. Therefore, each outcome takes into account that children with different characteristics were assigned to different groups. ***p < .001, all significant comparison were at a value where p < .008, which accounts for multiple comparisons using a Bonferroni correction. P-values are based on estimates from marginal means and differences across groups based on regression models with all control variables. Post-hoc tests revealed that group 2 was significantly different than groups 3 and 4. Analyses used appropriate analytic weights for the data used in this study (W2C_2P_2TZ, W2C_2P_2TZSTR, W2C_2P_2TZ0). The weighting techniques take into account the nested nature of the data by including the primary sampling unit and strata.

Table 6. Regression model results predicting parent outcomes by transition activity group membership.

	(a) Parent Involvement		(b) Parent Satisfaction
VARIABLES	(1)	(2)	(1)	(2)
Group 2: High Except Scheduling	−0.0421	−0.0541*	−0.006	−0.009
	(0.0303)	(0.0260)	(0.016)	(0.015)
Group 3: Low Face-to-Face	−0.0962**	−0.0640*	−0.024	−0.020
	(0.0367)	(0.0281)	(0.016)	(0.016)
Group 4: Low Information	−0.169***	−0.124***	−0.075***	−0.071***
	(0.0431)	(0.0344)	(0.0173)	(0.019)
Formerly attended Head Start		−0.0147		0.001
		(0.0231)		(0.009)
Age in months at K entry		0.000853		0.002*
		(0.00148)		(0.001)
Black		−0.0220		−0.009
		(0.0302)		(0.016)
Latinx		0.0223		−0.004
		(0.0214)		(0.015)
Other		−0.0518*		−0.017
		(0.0215)		(0.013)
Female		0.0131		0.013
		(0.0135)		(0.007)
SES quartile 2		0.147***		−0.005
		(0.0222)		(0.010)
SES quartile 3		0.259***		0.0149
		(0.0263)		(0.010)
SES quartile 4		0.361***		0.012
		(0.0234)		(0.0115)
Non-English language used at home		−0.0634**		0.025*
		(0.0204)		(0.012)
Parent-reported disability		−0.00815		−0.022*
		(0.0210)		(0.009)
Child attends half-day kindergarten		−0.0329		0.000
		(0.0204)		(0.0110)
Percent of nonwhite students in school		0.0402		−0.021
		(0.0370)		(0.020)
District composite poverty level		−0.00145		−0.000
		(0.000959)		(0.001)
School size: 150–299		−0.0381		−0.0246
		(0.0583)		(0.0247)
School size: 200–499		−0.0444		−0.0132
		(0.0596)		(0.0221)
School size: 500–749		−0.0620		−0.0134
		(0.0577)		(0.0221)
School size: 750+		−0.0823		5.81e-05
		(0.0613)		(0.0229)
School location: Suburb		−0.00994		0.00337
		(0.0276)		(0.0120)
School location: Town		0.00382		0.0187
		(0.0355)		(0.0170)
School location: Rural		0.0165		0.00508
		(0.0355)		(0.0141)
Private School		0.0163		0.00999
		(0.0551)		(0.0109)
Constant	1.316***	1.137***	1.011***	0.886***
	(0.0285)	(0.111)	(0.0132)	(0.0603)
Observations	7,038	7,026	7,035	7,024

Standard errors in parentheses; *** p < .001, **p < .01, * p < .05; Reference categories: Group 1: High Activities; Age = 4 years old at kindergarten entry; Race = White; Sex = Male; SES = SES quartile 1; School size = below 150; School location = Urban. Model 1 shows the bivariate relationship between group membership and each outcome. Model 2 also includes child and family control variables. Analyses used appropriate analytic weights for the data used in this study (W2C_2P_2TZ, W2C_2P_2TZSTR, W2C_2P_2TZ0). The weighting techniques take into account the nested nature of the data by including the primary sampling unit and strata.

Table 7. Regression model results predicting child outcomes by transition activity group membership.

	(a) Fall Reading		(b) Fall Math		(c) Fall Social Skills		(d) Initial School Adjustment
VARIABLES	(1)	(2)	(1)	(2)	(1)	(2)	(1)	(2)
Group 2: High except scheduling	0.653	0.965	0.355	0.605	−0.326	−0.378	0.844	0.606
	(0.872)	(0.692)	(1.075)	(0.656)	(0.931)	(1.010)	(0.490)	(0.511)
Group 3: Low face-to-face	−0.870	0.833	−2.114	0.0942	−0.280	−0.0565	−0.474	−0.583
	(1.043)	(0.882)	(1.170)	−0.834	(1.122)	(1.118)	(0.572)	(0.552)
Group 4: Low information	−1.605	0.358	−2.760*	−0.112	−0.998	−0.650	−1.093*	−1.205*
	(1.088)	(0.898)	(1.184)	(0.879)	(1.042)	(1.067)	(0.546)	(0.572)
Formerly attended Head Start		−0.989*		−1.426***		−0.586		0.283
		(0.398)		(0.371)		(0.358)		(0.449)
Age in months at K entry		0.333***		0.522***		0.0767*		0.141***
		(0.0466)		(0.0486)		(0.0360)		(0.040)
Black		−1.043		−3.299***		−1.105		1.014
		(0.552)		(0.673)		(0.622)		(0.616)
Latinx		−2.644***		−3.004***		−0.407		−0.080
		(0.511)		(0.518)		(0.368)		(0.598)
Other race		1.599*		1.117		0.0891		1.387*
		(0.645)		(0.630)		(0.726)		(0.545)
Female		0.725*		−0.677*		1.304***		1.358***
		(0.291)		(0.281)		(0.295)		(0.285)
SES quartile 2		2.603***		3.138***		0.797		−0.371
		(0.289)		(0.371)		(0.489)		(0.459)
SES quartile 3		6.356***		6.695***		1.646***		−0.623
		(0.560)		(0.569)		(0.479)		(0.430)
SES quartile 4		10.60***		10.63***		1.789***		−0.808
		(0.571)		(0.567)		(0.506)		(0.581)
Non-English language used at home		0.00598		−0.784		−1.016*		0.425
		(0.495)		(0.453)		(0.500)		(0.366)
Parent-reported disability		−1.988***		−2.333***		−0.152		−1.582***
		(0.401)		(0.419)		(0.378)		(0.449)
Child attends half-day kindergarten		−0.885		−0.664		−1.300*		1.338**
		(0.597)		(0.559)		(0.663)		(0.481)
Percent of nonwhite students in school		0.824		0.700		0.614		−0.090
		(1.139)		(0.889)		(0.979)		(0.999)
District composite poverty level		−0.008		−0.0663		0.006		−0.028
		(0.030)		(0.0387)		(0.032)		(0.026)
School size: 150–299		2.010		1.383		−1.452		−1.176
		(1.066)		(1.172)		(1.263)		(0.913)
School size: 200–499		1.799*		0.436		−1.299		−1.747
		(0.850)		(1.100)		(1.206)		(0.991)
School size: 500–749		2.088*		0.977		−1.710		−1.682
		(0.911)		(1.192)		(1.048)		(0.971)
School size: 750+		3.800**		2.114		−1.730*		−2.006
		(1.271)		(1.350)		(0.980)		(1.042)
School location: Suburb		−0.321		−0.761		−0.382		−0.942*
		(0.693)		(0.752)		(0.686)		(0.454)
School location: Town		−0.438		−1.043		−0.131		0.929
		(1.217)		(0.871)		(0.641)		(0.809)
School location: Rural		−0.623		−1.141		0.378		0.301
		(0.764)		(0.808)		(0.788)		(0.584)
Private School		−0.246		−0.247		1.065		−2.522
		(1.960)		(0.559)		(1.919)		(2.421)
Constant	54.48***	25.73***	36.47***	−1.093	50.35***	45.43***	49.64***	42.22***
	(0.755)	(3.117)	(0.896)	(3.225)	(0.893)	(2.931)	(0.440)	(2.935)
Observations	7,022	7,010	7,040	7,028	6,914	6,902	7,040	7,028

Standard errors in parentheses; *** p < .001, **p < .01, * p < .05; Reference categories: Group 1: High Activities; Age = 4 years old at kindergarten entry; Race = White; Sex = Male; SES = SES quartile 1; School size = below 150; School location = Urban. Model 1 shows the bivariate relationship between group membership and each outcome. Model 2 also includes child and family control variables. Analyses used appropriate analytic weights for the data used in this study (W2C_2P_2TZ, W2C_2P_2TZSTR, W2C_2P_2TZ0). The weighting techniques take into account the nested nature of the data by including the primary sampling unit and strata.

Table 8. Regression model results predicting gains in child outcomes by transition activity group membership.

	(e) Spring Math Gains		(f) Spring Reading Gains		(g) Spring Social Skills Gains
VARIABLES	(1)	(2)	(1)	(2)	(1)	(2)
Group 2: High Except scheduling	0.404	0.634	0.785	0.932	0.030	0.014
	(0.851)	(0.679)	(0.636)	(0.662)	(0.019)	(0.019)
Group 3: Low Face-to-Face	−0.022	0.274	0.559	1.089	0.054*	0.0411
	(0.991)	(0.791)	(0.773)	(0.735)	(0.022)	(0.0209)
Group 4: Low Information	−0.271	0.135	0.128	0.753	0.0248	(0.001)
	(0.890)	(0.755)	(0.852)	(0.858)	(0.021)	(0.021)
Formerly attended Head Start		−0.435		−0.319		−0.015
		(0.288)		(0.310)		(0.011)
Age in months at K entry		0.009		0.020		0.001
		(0.027)		(0.027)		(0.001)
Black		−2.449***		−0.792		−0.040**
		(0.499)		(0.496)		(0.014)
Latinx		−0.181		−0.0596		0.010
		(0.430)		(0.323)		(0.016)
Other		−0.896		−0.535		−0.008
		(0.472)		(0.516)		(0.017)
Female		0.035		0.838**		0.032***
		(0.255)		(0.270)		(0.008)
SES quartile 2		0.409		0.444		−0.012
		(0.292)		(0.298)		(0.010)
SES quartile 3		0.511		0.349		−0.004
		(0.440)		(0.451)		(0.013)
SES quartile 4		1.503**		1.186**		−0.014
		(0.456)		(0.417)		(0.012)
Non-English language used at home		0.0531		0.231		−0.041**
		(0.313)		(0.439)		(0.012)
Parent-reported disability		−1.538**		−1.117***		−0.0246**
		(0.258)		(0.310)		(0.009)
Child attends half-day kindergarten		−2.067***		−2.397***		−0.017
		(0.507)		(0.482)		(0.012)
Percent of nonwhite students in school		−0.434		−0.460		0.0319
		(0.747)		(0.903)		(0.0184)
District composite poverty level		0.013		−0.027		−0.001
		(0.031)		(0.030)		(0.001)
School size: 150–299		−1.828		−0.278		−0.073*
		(0.958)		(0.970)		(0.029)
School size: 200–499		−1.924		−0.189		−0.089**
		(1.173)		(0.764)		(0.0268)
School size: 500–749		−1.496		0.540		−0.091***
		(1.309)		(0.779)		(0.026)
School size: 750+		−1.959		1.098		−0.075**
		(1.273)		(0.922)		(0.028)
School location: Suburb		−0.667		−0.366		0.00725
		(0.584)		(0.554)		(0.0112)
School location: Town		−0.403		0.363		0.004
		(0.647)		(0.711)		(0.019)
School location: Rural		0.340		0.961		0.0211
		(0.690)		(0.738)		(0.012)
Private School		6.495***		3.202*		−0.018
		(2.450)		(1.424)		(0.010)
Centered fall reading		−0.020
		(0.012)
Centered fall math				0.075***
				(0.016)
Centered fall social skills						−0.021***
						(0.000)
Constant	14.10***	15.65***	14.26***	12.88***	0.090***	0.185***
	(0.928)	(2.543)	(0.584)	(1.968)	(0.018)	(0.057)
Observations	7,000	6,971	6,985	6,973	6,787	6,775

Standard errors in parentheses; ***p < .001, **p < .01, * p < .05; Reference categories: Group 1: High Activities; Age = 4 years old at kindergarten entry; Race = White; Sex = Male; SES = SES quartile 1; School size = below 150; School location = Urban. Model 1 shows the bivariate relationship between group membership and each outcome. Model 2 also includes child and family control variables. Analyses used appropriate analytic weights for the data used in this study (W2C_2P_2TZ, W2C_2P_2TZSTR, W2C_2P_2TZ0). The weighting techniques take into account the nested nature of the data by including the primary sampling unit and strata.

Parent Outcomes

Table 6 shows multi-level model results for parent outcomes, with model 1 representing unconditional models (no control variables) and model 2 representing models with all controls. When controlling for child and family characteristics, transition activity group membership significantly predicted parent involvement in school activities during the kindergarten year and parent satisfaction with the child’s school at the end of the kindergarten year. For example, for parent involvement, the coefficients for model 2 indicate that Group 2 reported participating in 0.05 fewer activities (since these were counts of activities from 0 to 7) compared to Group 1. On the other hand, Group 4 reported participating in 0.12 fewer activities than families in Group 1. While model 2 in Table 6 provides the coefficients for each predictor when holding all control variables constant (or set at zero), findings to research question 2 highlight that each transition activity group is comprised of children and families with different characteristics. To help us better understand what the predicted outcomes were for the children/families in each group, we calculated the marginal means for each group and present differences between groups in terms of effect sizes in figures (in other words, we allow the control variables to vary based on who comprises each group). As Figure 2 shows, parent involvement throughout the kindergarten year was significantly lower for families in the Low Face-to-Face and the Low Information groups (with effect size differences of 0.22 and 0.37, respectively) compared to families assigned to the High Activities group. They both were also significantly lower than families in the High Except Scheduling group(0.12 and 0.28, respectively). Figure 3 shows that parent satisfaction was significantly lower for families in the Low Information group (compared to families in other groups (with effect sizes between 0.33 and 0.21 below other groups).

Child Outcomes

For child outcomes, we examined immediate outcomes in fall of kindergarten (Table 7) and growth from fall to spring (Table 8) to help us understand whether transition practices had an immediate association with child outcomes and/or whether transition supports led to different growth patterns for children. As shown in Tables 7 and 8, our weighted regression models accounting for family and child demographic characteristics suggest that transition activity groups were statistically significantly associated with children’s initial school adjustment, but no other child outcomes in this study. When examining effect size differences of the marginal means – or the predicted outcome value for each group based on the characteristics of children and families in that group – children in the Low Face-to-Face and Low Information groups showed significantly lower initial adjustment scores than children in High Except Scheduling group with effect sizes 0.13 and 0.18 lower, respectively.

Additional Analyses as Robustness Checks

As a robustness check, we conducted all outcome models without and with school fixed effects to ensure that potential differences between schools were being sufficiently accounted for in the models given the nested nature of the data. Models with school fixed effects did not change the results; therefore, results from the more parsimonious models without them were presented here. In addition, we examined teacher-report of parent involvement as an additional outcome of transition activity group membership. The results were very similar to those found when examining parent report of parent involvement. Therefore, only the models with the parent report were included here. However, this sensitivity check does strengthen confidence in the model results related to parental involvement.

Discussion

Using an innovative child/family-centered analytic approach on data from a nationally representative sample of kindergarten children, we found that transition experiences offered by elementary schools to kindergarten children and their families could be categorized into four different groups. The High Activities group experienced high levels of all transition supports as reported by kindergarten teachers and parents, but they made up the smallest percentage of the sample (7%). The High Except Scheduling group (21% of the sample) had similar transition experiences as those in the High Activities group except they were less likely to experience staggered entry or shortened days at the start of the school year. Children from low-income families and children who were DLLs were less likely to be in this group compared to the groups that received Low Face-to-Face activities and Low Information. Children in the two High Activity groups had higher initial adjustment to school compared to the group that received Low Information. The High Activity group also had higher parent involvement and higher parental satisfaction by the end of kindergarten compared to the groups that received Low Face-to-Face and Low Information transition activities. Findings are also consistent with prior research showing that transition supports help enhance children’s initial adjustment to kindergarten (Ehrlich et al., 2021).

Children with different demographic characteristics had different likelihoods of being classified into the four transition activity groups. In particular, children from low-income households were more likely to be in the Low Face-to-Face and Low Information groups while children from higher-income households were more likely to be in the High Activities and High Except Scheduling groups. These findings are aligned with other research that has found that children from low-income families experience fewer transition practices (Cook & Coley, 2017; LoCasale-Crouch et al., 2008; Schulting et al., 2005)

Transition Experiences and Outcomes

Importantly, transition activity group membership was associated with parents’ school-based involvement throughout the kindergarten year. Families in Low Face-to-Face and Low Information exhibited significantly lower parental involvement scores than families in High Activities and High Except Scheduling groups. In addition, families in the Low Information group reported lower satisfaction with their child’s school at the end of kindergarten than families in all other groups. This suggests that parents of children whose transition experiences included high levels of various transition activities (with or without scheduling adaptations – those in groups 1 and 2) reported being more involved throughout the kindergarten year than parents of children whose transition experiences were more mixed (those in groups 3 and 4). We also saw that some practices had little association with child outcomes. For example, the main difference between groups 1 and 2 was that group 1 families were more likely to experience scheduling changes at the beginning of kindergarten such as staggered entry and shortened days. However, there were no significant differences between groups 1 and 2 on the outcomes we tested, implying that scheduling changes may not meaningfully contribute to families’ adjustment and outcomes. These findings suggest that parent outcomes are important to explore in future research to better understand the needs of the whole family during the transition, not just the individual child.

Controlling for demographic characteristics, group membership was related to parents’ reports of their child’s initial adjustment to school. Children in the Low Face-to-Face and Low Information groups had significantly lower initial school adjustment than children in the High Except Scheduling group. The finding that transition activity group membership was related to children’s initial adjustment reinforces the theory that transition support practices may be most related to proximal measures of child outcomes. Initial adjustment to school, measured in the fall of kindergarten, was the most proximal outcome measured in the analyses.

Overall, our findings support the theory that children and families are often offered a suite of transition supports that amount to more than the sum of individual practices. This emphasizes the importance of using a child-centered analysis – such as LCA – to better understand the holistic experience of transition activities that a child and family may be exposed to. In comparison to a variable-centered analysis, the child-centered analysis takes into account the unique combination of experiences of the child or family. Future research could build upon this work by including transition activities reported by ECE providers, combining those with kindergarten teacher reports and parent reports in the same LCA. Given that transition practices that are coordinated between ECE and elementary schools, such as sharing curriculum information or holding meetings between teachers across the systems, are associated with children’s positive academic outcomes in kindergarten, it is important to note the absence of ECE transition practices in this study (Ahtola et al., 2011; Cook & Coley, 2019; Cook et al., 2018; LoCasale-Crouch et al., 2008).

In addition, more research could be done to better understand how transition activities support relationship building. Prior research suggests that specific practices that involve family-school connections (e.g., family orientations) are associated with children’s overall positive adjustment to kindergarten and increased achievement in reading and math (Cook & Coley, 2017, 2019; LoCasale-Crouch et al., 2008; Schulting et al., 2005). Similarly, enhanced and early development of relationships between children and kindergarten teachers through transition practices has been associated with elevated child success (Hamre & Pianta, 2001; Jerome & Pianta, 2008; Rimm-Kaufman & Pianta, 2000), occurring through teacher knowledge and understanding of children’s strengths and needs during transitions and greater use of developmentally appropriate practices. However, we were not able to explore these relationships within this study.

Strengths & Limitations

While the analyses in this paper used innovative methods and found intriguing results using a nationally representative sample of kindergartners, there are several limitations. First, the data used for these analyses are survey data collected for descriptive purposes; therefore, all analyses are correlational, and no claims of cause and effect can be made. To help address this issue of selection bias, models included multiple child, family, and school control variables to help isolate the association between transition activity group membership and parent or child outcomes. In addition, information about transition activities were based on reports from teachers and parents. Teacher reports were about the transition supports they provided but were not specific as to whether the study child/family received them. Therefore, we must consider these supports as what the family had access to, but we are not sure if the family actually received these supports. For the parent reports, the parents’ perceptions of activities (e.g., what parents perceive about the information they received) can play an important role in how engaged families are with their child’s elementary school but may also not completely capture what the child or family actually received. In addition, the questions asked of parents and teachers were not the same; therefore it is not appropriate to compare them directly. As such, our modeling choices take into account the combinations of these experiences from each of their perspectives rather than make a direct comparison.

While the nationally representative nature of the dataset and analytic methods allow for generalizability to children who entered kindergarten in 2011, we acknowledge that this was more than 10 years ago and that some transition practices and experiences may have changed over this time. It is also important to note that a limitation of the dataset is that data collection began in the fall of kindergarten, so no data were collected about transition supports provided by ECE providers. Therefore, we are unable to fully understand families’ holistic transition experiences inclusive of their ECE experiences because the ECLS-K:2011 did not measure supports throughout the full transition period. Since research has shown that many transition activities can occur prior to kindergarten while children are still in ECE settings (LoCasale-Crouch et al., 2008), particularly Head Start programs (Cook & Coley, 2020) where regulations mandate transition practices occur (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2016), it is a limitation of our study that we could not capture them here. However, we do control for prior Head Start attendance, given that Head Start programs have a strong emphasis on transition practices and supports prior to kindergarten entry. Further, these analyses could not capture system-level supports on the ECE and K-12 sides of the transition that may play a key role in supporting successful transitions to kindergarten (Ehrlich et al., 2021). Related, when estimating child outcomes, we were not able to control for children’s prior skills and functioning before the transition to kindergarten (ECLS-K does not include these data).

Implications

Findings from this study lend themselves to implications for policy and practice, specifically focused on engaging multiple systems in efforts to support the transition to kindergarten, and ensuring that intentional practices are put in place to support the needs of families with low-income during the transition to kindergarten.

Expanding Systems Level Supports Beyond the Kindergarten Teacher

The High Activities and High Except Scheduling groups were distinguished by teacher reports of scheduling practices to support the transition. While children in the High Activities group had teachers who reported high levels of all transition activities, including staggered entry and shortened days at the beginning of the year, children in the High Except Scheduling group had fewer teachers who reported staggered entry and almost no reports of shortened school days. This finding is interesting because these two kindergarten teacher-reported practices may be proxies for systems-level (school- or local education agency-level) transition policies universal for all children, rather than specific to a particular kindergarten teacher. The fact that these two groups emerged as distinct groups in our LCA points to the importance of understanding transition policies beyond the individual teacher or classroom, an approach that has limited research to date (Ehrlich et al., 2021). While it is important for kindergarten teachers to be deeply involved in transition activities, in order to scale these supports so that all children and families have greater access to them, coordinated efforts, resources, and supports are needed at the elementary school and local education agency levels. Specifically, transition planning teams could be set up to ensure consistency of transition practices within and across schools in a community, and to ensure that the time and resources needed to successfully implement transition practices are dedicated at all levels of the education system. This recommendation is consistent with recent work to conceptualize a theory of change on the transition to kindergarten that takes a systems perspective (Ehrlich et al., 2021), and resources to support successful transition planning teams (Pianata & Kraft-Sayre, 2003).

Deepening and Broadening Outreach to Meet the Needs of Families

Our findings also point to important implications for supporting families’ needs during the transition to kindergarten. Importantly, the Low Face-to-Face (59%) and Low Information (13%) groups had different experiences than those in the two high activity groups. Children in these two groups were more likely to be from low-income households and were more likely to be DLLs. They had lower initial adjustment scores and their parents had lower involvement in school and less satisfaction with the child’s elementary school at the end of the kindergarten year. These findings suggest that kindergarten teachers, elementary schools, and local education agencies may need to be more intentional about the types of supports they provide to families as well as the outreach they do engage families. For example, there may be barriers to families’ receipt of information such that providing information in multiple ways may enable greater access to information and thus better support families with diverse resources and needs. This type of outreach may include both electronic (mobile, e-mail, and school dashboards) and paper, information translated into multiple languages, and/or information shared through other school personnel (counselors, social workers, support specialists) or intermediary channels that families know and trust such as community partners. While families may be able to access information, it is likely that information alone may not make other transition activities available to them, such as opportunities to connect with the school for face to face events. In order to participate in events, they need to be available at times when families can reasonably attend, taking into account work schedules, and child care needs for other children in the family. Since low-income families are more likely to work jobs with non-traditional schedules, have limited paid time off, and lack access to affordable child care, these factors must be taken into account when schools plan activities to meet the needs of all children and families transitioning to kindergarten.

Overall, the current analyses help address gaps in the literature, including the limited understanding of the role that parents play during the transition to kindergarten and how transitions may be associated with parents’ own outcomes. This role is evident in the significant relationships found between transition activity group membership and parent outcomes, whereby families experiencing a broader combination of transition supports demonstrated increased parental satisfaction and parental involvement.

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank the following people for their feedback on the design, analyses, and writing for this study: Kathleen Dwyer, Nina Phillipsen, Emily Ross, Eric Hedberg, Van-Kim Lin, Eric Dearing, and Dana McCoy.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

This study used the public version of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Class of 2010-2011 (ECLSK:2011). The data is available for download from the Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics at: https://nces.ed.gov/ecls/dataproducts.asp

Additional information

Funding

Analyses for this paper were supported by the US Department of Health and Human Services,Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Contract No. HHSP233201500048I, awarded to NORC at the University of Chicago. This paper does not necessarily represent the views or policies of the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation,the Administration for Children and Families or the US Department of Health and HumanServices.