Knowledge before school-age, is power during school-age: A study of urban preschool and the learning disabled

The primary purpose of this study was to determine if urban preschool decreased the likelihood of future identification of learning disabled (LD). According to the Child Development Institute (2010) and the Learning Disabilities Association of America (2010), four to ten percent of the school-aged students in this country are learning disabled. The quantitative research methodology employed a causal-comparative design using archival data collected from the questionnaires completed by parents/guardians within one urban city in the United States. This study explored 49 students that had been identified as LD, attended an urban elementary school and were in grades one to five. The collected data for this study concludes that the completion of public preschool appears to decrease the likelihood of future identification of LD. The results of the statistical test, chi square goodness to fit, indicated that there was a significant difference between the completion of public preschool and the future identification of learning disabled. In addition, the results revealed that there was a significant difference between the number of children who had completed public preschool and attended first grade without a learning disability and the number of children who had not completed public preschool and attended first grade with a learning disability. The chi square goodness to fit implied that there was a statistically significant difference between the number of children identified as learning disabled during the elementary school years (grades one to five) who had completed public preschool and the number of children identified as learning disabled during the elementary school years (grades one to five) who had not completed public preschool.