Introduction

Organization of the Report

The findings in this report are organized in two sections, which coincide with the two sets of research questions identified above. First, information on children?s achievement and growth in various subject areas is presented. Within this section, children?s knowledge and skills are presented in terms of their overall achievement in reading and mathematics and in terms of the acquisition of specific skills in the two subjects. The second section describes children?s perceptions about themselves and their relationships with others on six different dimensions, including children?s perceptions about their competence and interest in (1) reading, (2) mathematics, and (3) school in general and their perceptions about their (4) peer relationships and any (5) internalizing or (6) externalizing behaviors that they may exhibit. Both sections describe the population of children overall and in relation to characteristics of the children, their families, and their early school experiences. Following the main sections of the report, appendix A includes the tables of estimates and standard errors cited in the report and appendix B provides methodology details and other technical notes relevant to the report.

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 answer the research questions. First, bivariate analyses (i.e., t-tests) that compare the overall unadjusted mean scores for different groups of children were conducted. Second, ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses were used in order 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, after controlling for other characteristics. One of the limitations of bivariate statistics is that they describe children?s achievement gains and status for different groups of children without taking into account the influence of 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 risk factors varies by children?s race/ethnicity (Zill and West 2001). Thus, it is possible that lower achievement scores for some minority children may be attributed to their number of family risk factors, which are not controlled for in bivariate analyses. 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 analyses results within each section of the report and address this question: Do the differences found in the mean comparisons persist after controlling for other child, family, and school characteristics?

This is a descriptive report. Readers should not draw causal inferences from the regression results in this report, since apparent relationships can change based on the particular independent variables examined. The small set of independent variables used in this report?s regression analyses were included with the specific purpose of clarifying the descriptive results observed in the multiple bivariate comparisons.