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

Acknowledgments


+ Executive Summary
Findings

What Children Know

What Children Know, by Child, Family, and School Characteristics

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 Findings2

This section presents highlights of the findings. The report uses data from the ECLS-K to address the following questions:

  • What reading and mathematics knowledge and skills do children demonstrate in the spring of first grade? Do children's knowledge and skills differ by certain child, family, and school characteristics?
  • What is the relationship of children's early literacy, approaches to learning, and general health status as they enter kindergarten to their spring kindergarten and first grade reading and mathematics achievement? In particular, how do the following resources relate to children's spring kindergarten and spring first grade achievement:
  • proficiency in recognizing letters,
  • being read to at least three times a week,
  • proficiency in recognizing numbers and basic shapes,
  • proficiency in the mathematical concept of relative size,
  • demonstrating a positive approach to learning often or very often, and
  • being in very good to excellent general health?
2 In an effort to provide information on the early education experiences of the typical child (i.e., one who spent 1 year in kindergarten and then continued on to first grade), the children included in the analysis entered kindergarten for the first time in fall of 1998 and were promoted on time to first grade in the fall of 1999. Further, since this report provides information on children's early reading achievement, and the reading assessment was administered in English, the analyses in this report are limited to those children who were administered the English reading assessment. For more information, see the Analytic Sample section of the report. To achieve consistency in the sample across rounds (i.e., fall kindergarten, spring kindergarten and spring first grade), the analyses in this report are limited to those children who were assessed in English in all three rounds of data collection.

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