Kindergarten

Skills Children Acquire In Kindergarten

Last Updated Oct 5, 2008 10:17 AM

Children begin kindergarten with many different levels of reading and mathematics skills and make significant gains in their reading and mathematics achievement over the first 2 years of school (West, Denton, and Germino Hausken 2000; West, Denton, and Reaney 2001; Denton and West 2002). The knowledge and skills children acquire in kindergarten and first grade can serve as a foundation for their later educational success. It is important to explore children’s growth and development as they move from the beginning of kindergarten through the elementary school years.

This is the fourth report in a series that provides descriptive information about young children’s school experiences, based on data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998–99 (ECLS-K). Sponsored by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), part of the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences,1 the ECLS-K selected a nationally representative sample of kindergartners in the fall of 1998 and is following these children through the spring of fifth grade. The study collects information directly from the children and their families, teachers, and schools. The full ECLS-K baseyear sample is composed of 22,782 children who attended 1,277 schools with kindergarten programs during the 1998–99 school year.

The first ECLS-K report, America’s Kindergartners (West, Denton, and Germino Hausken 2000), provided a national picture of the knowledge and skills of entering kindergartners. In the second report, The Kindergarten Year (West, Denton, and Reaney 2001), children’s gains and status in reading and mathematics were explored during their first year of school. The third report in this series, Children’s Reading and Mathematics Achievement in Kindergarten and First Grade (Denton and West 2002), described children’s reading and mathematics achievement in the spring of kindergarten and the spring of first grade.

This fourth report highlights children’s gains in reading and mathematics over their first 4 years of school, from the start of kindergarten to the point when most of the children are finishing third grade.2 The report also describes children’s achievement in reading and mathematics at the end of third grade, both in terms of their overall achievement in the two subject areas and in terms of their specific reading and mathematics knowledge and skills. It examines whether differences in reading and mathematics achievement that were identified for certain groups of children in kindergarten and first grade persist 2 or 3 years later. Specifically, comparisons are made by children’s sex, race/ethnicity, and the number of family risk factors.3 Achievement is also compared for children with different early school experiences (i.e., attended full-day vs. half-day kindergarten programs, attended public vs. private vs. both school types from kindergarten through third grade).

Information on two new ECLS-K direct child assessments conducted in the spring of 2002 is included. In the third-grade year, children were administered a science assessment for the first time in place of the general knowledge assessment, which was used in the kindergarten and first-grade years. In addition, third-graders completed a self-description questionnaire (SDQ) on their perceptions of their competence and interests in reading, mathematics, and school in general. They also rated their popularity with peers and competence in peer relationships, and reported on any internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors that they might exhibit. The SDQ questionnaire provides the first direct information from the ECLS-K children about how they feel about their school experiences.

The purposes of this report are to describe the academic gains children have made from kindergarten through third grade, their achievement status at the end of third grade, and their perceptions about their school experiences. Two types of analyses were used to achieve these purposes. In addition to comparing the overall mean estimates and scores for different groups of children (i.e., bivariate analyses), more complex multivariate analyses (i.e., ordinary least squares regression) were conducted to describe the relationships of different child, family, and early school experience characteristics (e.g., race/ethnicity, number of risk factors, kindergarten program type) with children’s achievement and perceptions, while controlling for the other characteristics. One of the limitations of mean comparisons is that they describe children’s achievement gains and status for different groups of children without taking into account other factors that may also be related to achievement differences. For instance, family risk factors are related to children’s achievement (West, Denton, and Reaney 2001), though the average number of these factors varies by children’s race/ethnicity (Zill and West 2001). Bivariate results are included in the report to describe overall, unadjusted mean values for subgroups in the population. Findings from the regression analyses follow the bivariate results within each section of the report and further explain whether bivariate differences hold when other risk factors are taken into account.

See also Kindergarten 514 1 - 6