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Crystal Mendez

Professor Dr. Montgomery

ECE 250

8 May 2022

Research Article Review

Name of Article: Jumpstart program efficacy: The impact of early childhood education

advancement initiatives on low-income preschool children’s literacy, agency, and social relations

Authors: Shu-Chen Yen and Angela Y Lee.

Journal it appeared in: Cogent Education (10 March 2019)

Hypothesis

The researchers are looking to examine the model on children’s learning outcomes.

There is a socioeconomic gap that causes educational inequalities in schools all over the country

and it has gotten exacerbated. Schools from lower income households face many challenges such

as underserved communities from overcrowding, underfunding, and lack support of educational

programming. All these negatively impact children from low-income households. This research

examines the affect it can help students with their literacy, initiative, and social relations of

children from low-income communities. The researchers are guessing that children from low-

income households will significantly improve on their language and literacy, initiative, and

social development skills with the help of Jumpstart intervention. It is essential to get children

into early interventions but with the classroom being overcrowded it can be challenging to do.

So, Jumpstart has brought highly educated college students into classrooms and have a one-on-
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one interaction with students. This individualized learning should increase students’ motivation

to learn. Jumpstart helps students with their school readiness for example their language, literacy

skills, and social development.

Methodology

The researchers are guessing that children from low-income households will significantly

improve on their language and literacy, initiative, and social development skills with the help of

Jumpstart intervention. It is essential to get children into early interventions but with the

classroom being overcrowded it can be challenging to do. So, Jumpstart has brought highly

educated college students into classrooms and have a one-on-one interaction with students. This

individualized learning should increase students’ motivation to learn. Jumpstart helps students

with their school readiness for example their language, literacy skills, and social development.

The college students that participated in this research consisted of 41 undergraduates. The Corps

members completed the service-learning course and trained how to administer the Jumpstart

curriculum that follows units: Welcome, Reading, Circle time, Center Time, Let’s Find Out

About It, and Sharing and Goodbye. They worked in teams of 5-6 people with the preschool’s

head teachers and assign 4-5 children to each Corps member. The Corps members also served

200-300 hours over the school year and practiced jumpstart sessions twice a week at the

preschool. The participants in this study were in 133 preschools and the children’s age group

were between 3-5 years of age, that were enrolled in seven Head Start programs in Orange

County, California. However, 12 children were removed from the research due to missing data or

neglected to complete the jumpstart program. Head Start teachers collected the data on the

student’s language, literacy, initiative, and social skills. Then the Jumpstart School Success
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Checklist (JSSC) is done in the fall at the beginning and in the spring at the conclusion of the

Jumpstart sessions. Children’s literacy skills are assessed by examining their proficiency with

listening to understanding speech, using vocabulary, complex patterns of speech, showing

awareness of sounds in words, demonstrating knowledge about books, letters names, and sounds,

reading, and writing. Children with advanced language and literacy skills were observed to

ongoing dialogues, read about loud phrases and sentences and use clauses or compound subjects

in speech as opposed to only responding to questions in conversation, using the same word to

name more than one object, or speaking in simple sentences. Their initiative skills are observed

on how they fluidly solve problems and make choices/plans. Children with advanced initiative

skills were observed to make plans with multiple details and choices. They also worked to solve

problems over serval attempts rather than becoming frustrated or leaving the task. The children

were also assessed on their socioemotional skills by examining how they initiate with others,

resolve interpersonal conflict, understand and express their feelings, relate to adults, and relate to

other children. Children with advanced socioemotional skills played games with rules,

negotiating conflicts with other children, identifying and expressing reasons for emotions, and

bonding with adults and peers.

Author’s Conclusions

The results showed that children’s mean score on the JSSC significantly improved from

the fall (M=2.08, SE=.06) to the spring (M=4.09, SE=.07). There was improvement in all three

areas, language and literacy scores increased from pre-test to post-test by 1.95 points, initiative

increased from pre-test to post-test by 1.94, and in social development from pre-test to post-test

by 2.16 points. The students from low-income preschool, who participated in Jumpstart program

showed that they improved significantly in all categories.

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Your Critiques

I am impressed on how this early intervention had such positive effects on children and I

would like to see Jumpstart in more schools across the country. Jumpstart provides a more one

on one interaction with students from low-income households to help them in language and

literacy, initiative, and social development skills. It will also help in schools that are Title I and

schools that are facing overcrowding were teachers are not able to interact with all their students.

In hopes that other schools get the funding they too can be able to get this early intervention in

their schools because I believe that this intervention can benefit all children. However, I can see

that it might become an issue as Jumpstart relies on volunteers’ instructors, which can be a

challenge to find a full staff of volunteers.

How Information Could Be Used In The Early Childhood Field

As I said previously that Jumpstart should be incorporated into all schools. This

supplementary early childhood education program is something that all students can benefit

from. Early intervention is crucial for students to do well academically and having an one-on-one

interactions with students is shown that students significantly improve on the subject areas that

they are practicing. If this early intervention was applied to all schools than the achievement gap

between marginalized and privileged students in graduation rate and standardized test

performance can diminish.