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Children's Reading and Mathematics Achievement in Kindergarten and First Grade

Acknowledgments

+ Executive Summary

+ Children's Reading and Mathematics Achievement in Kindergarten and First Grade


Questions

Organization of the Report

+ Measures


Analytic Sample

+ Findings


Summary


List of Figures

Full Report (PDF)
Line Organization of the Report

The findings in this report are organized in two sections, which coincide with the two sets of questions identified above. First, information on children's reading and mathematics skills and knowledge at the spring of first grade by child, family, and school characteristics are presented. Next, the report presents information on the relationship of resources children possess at kindergarten entry to their spring kindergarten and first grade reading and mathematics achievement. Within each section, children's reading and mathematics knowledge and skills are presented in terms of an indicator of overall achievement (i.e., a t-score; for information on t-scores, see the Measures section of this report) and in terms of specific skills (i.e., proficiencies).

When information on children's reading and mathematics knowledge and skills is presented, estimates are based on children in the sample who entered kindergarten for the first time in the fall of 1998 and who received the ECLS-K direct cognitive assessment in English in both the fall and the spring of kindergarten, and the spring of first grade. Comparisons made in the text are tested for statistical significance to ensure that the differences are larger than might be expected, due to sampling variation. All differences described are significant at the .05 level3.

3 Not all significant differences are discussed in this report. Due to the large sample size, nearly all differences (no matter how substantively minor) are significant. Therefore, only differences of about one-quarter of a standard deviation are discussed (e.g., 2 or 3 points for a mean t-score difference) (for review, see Cohen 1988).

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