The effectiveness of looping on kindergarten readiness

This experimental comparison-group post-test only design explored the differences in mean scores of preschool students on the Get Ready to Read and Developmental Tasks for Kindergarten Readiness Assessments. Students in the group (n = 114) were randomly assigned to either the looping (LG) (n = 41) or non-looping (NLG) (n = 73) group. Students in the looping group remained with the same teacher and classmates for a period of two years whereas students in the non-looping group changed teachers and classmates at the beginning of their second year.; The purpose of this study was to determine whether or not four-year-old students who participated in a two-year looping rotation demonstrated greater emergent reading development and kindergarten readiness than students who participated in a traditional grade-level rotation. Ex post facto data were collected and analyzed through several statistical analyses intended to answer ten research questions aimed at comparing the two groups. Group profiles revealed that the LG was more at-risk for school failure due to its higher proportion of low SES students and higher proportion of males to females. Findings indicated that SES and gender might have had significant effects on student scores. Further analysis found that almost twice as many students in the NLG were categorized in the lowest score range on the GRRA and almost five times as many on the DTKR when compared to the LG. Therefore it appeared that the looping intervention had a moderating effect since no statistical differences between scores were found.