Kids Do Better When They Go to Preschool All Day, Study Finds

Full-day preschool may prepare children better for learning and social development than part-time programs, new research showed, bolstering the case for putting kids in classrooms at younger ages.

The findings from a study of 982 low-income and ethnic-minority 3- and 4-year-olds, enrolled in Chicago’s Child-Parent Center Education Program, are reported in today’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. They found that full-day programs improved four of six measures of school readiness as well as attendance.