Strengthening Children’s Math Skills with Enhanced Instruction The Impacts of Making Pre-K Count and High 5s on Kindergarten Outcomes

In Making Pre-K Count, pre-K programs were randomly assigned to receive an evidence-based early math curriculum (Building Blocks) and associated professional development or to a pre-K-as-usual control condition. Pre-K in New York City changed rapidly during the study, with teachers overall conducting substantially more math than had previously been documented — a factor that may have played a role in the lack of impacts from Making Pre-K Count on children’s math learning at the end of the pre-K year. In the High 5s study, students who had been in Making Pre-K Count program classrooms in pre-K were individually randomly assigned within schools in the kindergarten year to supplemental small-group math clubs, which took place outside of regular instructional time, or to a business-as-usual kindergarten experience. A companion report describes the High 5s program in more detail. This report focuses on the effects in kindergarten of the two math programs.