Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS)

1. Overview

The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS) program is one of the active longitudinal surveys sponsored by NCES. The ECLS program includes three cohorts: a birth cohort and two kindergarten cohorts (the kindergarten class of 1998–99 and the kindergarten class of 2010–11). The birth cohort study (ECLS-B) followed a sample of children born in 2001 from birth through kindergarten; the first kindergarten study (ECLS-K) followed a sample of children who were in kindergarten in the 1998–99 school year through the eighth grade; and the second kindergarten study (ECLS-K:2011) is following a sample of kindergartners in the 2010–11 school year through the fifth grade. The ECLS provides comprehensive and reliable datasets with information about the ways in which children are prepared for school and how children develop in relation to their family, early childhood, and school environments.

Purpose

The ECLS provides national data on (1) children’s status at birth and at various points thereafter; (2) children’s transitions to nonparental care, early education programs, and school; and (3) children’s experiences and growth through the eighth grade. These data enable researchers to test hypotheses about associations and interactions of a wide range of family, school, community, and child characteristics with children’s development, early learning, and performance in school.

Components

The ECLS has three cohort studies—two kindergarten cohort studies (ECLS-K and ECLS-K:2011) and a birth cohort study (ECLS-B)—and each of these has its own components.

The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010–11 (ECLS-K:2011). The ECLS-K:2011 collects data on children’s cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development from the children, their families, classroom teachers, special education teachers, school administrators, and before- and after-school care providers. Information also is collected on children’s home environment, home educational activities, school environment, classroom environment, classroom curriculum, teacher background, and before- and after-school care.

Direct child assessments. Children are administered assessments containing age- and grade-appropriate items measuring important cognitive skills and knowledge in each round of data collection. The untimed assessments are administered directly to the sampled children, one-on-one, by a trained assessor. The kindergarten child assessment measured reading (fall and spring), mathematics (fall and spring), and science (spring) knowledge and skills, as well as executive function (fall and spring)— executive function is “the capacity to plan, organize, and monitor the execution of behaviors that are strategically directed in a goal-oriented manner” (NIH, n.d.). Also in the kindergarten year, Spanish-speaking English language learner (ELL) children who did not achieve a minimum score on assessment items measuring their basic English language skills had their Spanish early reading skills assessed. In addition to the cognitive components, all children had their height and weight measured in the fall and spring. The kindergarten direct cognitive assessment included two-stage assessments for reading and mathematics. For each assessment, the first stage was a routing section that included items covering a broad range of difficulty. A child’s performance on the routing section determined which one of three second-stage tests (low, middle, or high difficulty) the child was administered. The second-stage tests varied by level of difficulty so that a child would be administered questions appropriate to his or her demonstrated level of ability for each of these cognitive domains. The kindergarten science assessment included 20 items that all children received; a two-stage assessment was not used in this domain during kindergarten.

Parent interviews. Information is collected from parents/guardians in each data collection round using computer-assisted interviews (CAIs). The parent interview asks about family structure, family literacy practices, parental involvement in school, nonparental care arrangements, household composition, family income, parent education level and employment, and other demographic indicators. Parents are also asked to report on their children’s health, socioemotional well-being, and disability status.

Classroom teacher questionnaires. Teachers provide information about the children they teach, the children’s learning environment, and themselves. More specifically, they are asked about their own backgrounds, teaching practices, and experience. They are also asked to provide information on the classroom experiences for the sampled children they teach and to evaluate each sampled child on a number of critical cognitive and noncognitive dimensions. Information is collected from classroom teachers via self-administered questionnaires during the fall and spring data collections.

Special education teacher questionnaires. Special education teachers and related service providers of sampled children who have an Individualized Education Program (IEP) are asked to provide information on the nature and types of services provided to the children, as well as on their own background and experience. Information is collected from special education teachers via self-administered questionnaires during spring data collection.

School administrator questionnaire. School administrators are asked to provide information on the physical, organizational, and fiscal characteristics of their schools, and on the schools’ learning environment and programs. School administrators also provide information on their own background and experience. Information is collected from school administrators via self-administered questionnaires during spring data collection.

Before- and after-school care provider questionnaires. The kindergarten before- and after-school care (BASC) component collected important information about children’s environments and experiences in nonparental care with regular before- or after-school care providers. Adults other than the child’s parents/guardians who cared for the study child for at least 5 hours per week were asked to provide information such as the location where care was provided, children’s activities while in care, characteristics of other children in care, and their own background and experience.

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The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998–99 (ECLS-K). The ECLS-K collected data from children, their families, classroom teachers, special education teachers, school administrators, and student records. The various components are described below.

Direct child assessments. The direct child assessments covered several cognitive domains (reading and mathematics in kindergarten through eighth grade; general knowledge, consisting of science and social studies questions, in kindergarten and first grade; and science in third, fifth, and eighth grades); a psychomotor assessment (fall kindergarten only), including fine and gross motor skills; and height and weight measurements. Beginning with the third-grade data collection, children reported on their own perceptions of their abilities and achievement, as well as their interest in and enjoyment of reading, math, and other school subjects. An English language proficiency screener, the Oral Language Development Scale (OLDS), was administered to children if school records indicated that the child’s home language was not English. The child had to demonstrate a certain level of English proficiency on the OLDS to be administered the ECLS-K cognitive assessment in English. If a child spoke Spanish at home and did not have the English skills required for the ECLS-K battery, the child was administered a Spanish version of the OLDS, and the mathematics and psychomotor assessments were administered in Spanish. The assessment for each cognitive domain included a routing test (to determine a child’s approximate skill level) and second-stage tests that were tailored to different skill levels. In the eighth-grade data collection, children completed a student questionnaire after completing the routing test. The student questionnaire covered many topics about the child’s school experiences, school-sponsored and out-of-school activities, self-perceptions of social and academic competence and interests, weight and exercise, and diet.

Parent interviews. Parents/guardians were asked to provide key information about their children and their families, such as the demographics of household members (e.g., age, relation to child, race/ethnicity), family structure (household members and composition), parent/guardian involvement at the school and with children’s schoolwork, home educational activities, children’s child care experiences, child health, parental/guardian education and employment status, and their children’s social skills and behaviors.

Classroom teacher questionnaires. In the kindergarten collections, all kindergarten teachers with ECLS-K-sampled children were asked to provide information on their educational backgrounds, teaching practices, teaching experiences, and the classroom settings in which they taught. They also were asked to complete a child-specific questionnaire that collected information on each sample child’s social skills and approaches to learning, academic skills, and education placements. This procedure continued in later rounds of the study. However, modifications were made beginning with the spring-fifth grade data collection, where the teachers who were most knowledgeable about the child’s performance in each of the core academic subjects (i.e., reading/language arts, mathematics, and science) provided the data pertinent to each child’s classroom environment and instruction for the academic subject about which they were most knowledgeable. Teachers also provided information about their professional background.

Special education teacher questionnaires. In each spring data collection, the primary special education teachers of and special education staff (e.g., speech pathologists, reading instructors, audiologists) who worked with sample children receiving special education services in school were asked to complete questionnaires about the children’s experiences in special education, as well as their own professional background. Items in the special education teacher questionnaires addressed topics such as the child’s disability, Individualized Education Program (IEP) goals, the amount and type of services sampled children received, and communication with parents and general education teachers about the child’s special education program and progress.

School administrator questionnaire. School administrators were asked about school characteristics (e.g., school type, enrollment, and student body composition), school facilities and resources, community characteristics and school safety, school policies and practices, school-family-community connections, school programs for particular populations (e.g., English language learners), staffing and teacher characteristics, school governance and climate, and their own characteristics.

Student records abstract. In each round of data collection except eighth grade, school staff members were asked to complete a student records abstract form for each sampled child after the school year ended. These forms were used to obtain information about the child’s attendance record, the presence of an IEP, the type of language or English proficiency screening that the school used, and (in the kindergarten year collection) whether the child participated in Head Start prior to kindergarten. A copy of each child’s report card was also requested.

School facilities checklist. This checklist was used to collect information about the (1) availability and condition of the selected school’s facilities, such as classrooms, gymnasiums, and toilets; (2) presence and adequacy of security measures; (3) presence of environmental factors that may affect the learning environment; and (4) overall learning climate of the school. An additional set of questions on portable classrooms was added to the spring first-grade checklist.

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The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B). The ECLS-B, which began in October 2001, was designed to study children’s early learning and development from birth through the fall of the kindergarten year. Over the course of the study, data were collected from multiple sources, including birth certificates, children, parents/guardians, nonparental care providers, and teachers. Data from the Common Core of Data (CCD) and the Private School Survey (PSS) were linked to provide administrative information for the schools where the children attended kindergarten. These components are described below.

Birth certificates. These records provided information on the date of birth, child’s sex, parents’ education, parents’ race and ethnicity (including Hispanic origin), mother’s marital status, mother’s pregnancy history, prenatal care, medical and other risk factors during this pregnancy and complications during labor and birth, and child’s health characteristics at birth (such as congenital anomalies and abnormal conditions of the baby and the baby’s Apgar score).

Parent/guardian interviews. A parent/guardian interview was conducted in the children’s home at each data collection point to capture information about the children’s early health and development, their experiences with family members and other significant people in their lives, the parents/guardians as caregivers, the home environment, and the neighborhood in which they lived. In most cases, the parent/guardian interviewed was the child’s mother or female guardian.

Child assessments. Beginning at 9 months, children participated in activities designed to measure important developmental skills in the cognitive, socioemotional, and physical domains.

Cognitive domain. The cognitive assessments at the 9 month and 2-year data collections assessed general mental ability, including problem solving and language acquisition. The Bayley Short Form-Research Edition (BSF-R), designed specifically for the ECLS-B, was utilized in the 9-month month and 2-year data collections and consists of selected items from the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (BSID-II).

The cognitive assessments at the preschool, kindergarten 2006, and kindergarten 2007 data collections assessed early reading and mathematics and consisted of items from the ECLS-K as well as other studies and instruments. Color knowledge also was assessed in the preschool data collection.

Socioemotional domain. The Nursing Child Assessment Teaching Scale (NCATS) was used in the 9-month collection to assess child-parent interactions. An attachment rating, the Toddler Attachment Sort-45 (TAS-45), was used in the second round of data collection. A videotaped parent-child interaction (the Two Bags Task) was also used in the second and third rounds of data collection.

Physical domain. In the 9-month data collection, children’s height, weight, and middle upper arm circumference were assessed; additionally, a measure of head circumference was taken for children born with very low birth weight. These physical measures were taken again at all follow-up data collections. Additionally, children’s fine and gross motor skills were assessed at all data collections (using the BSF-R motor scale in the 9-month and 2-year data collections and the ECLS-K Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency and Movement Assessment Battery for Children in the preschool, kindergarten 2006, and kindergarten 2007 data collections).

Nonparental care and education providers. Individuals and organizations that provided regular care for a child were interviewed with the permission of the child’s parents. They were asked about their backgrounds, teaching practices and experience, the children in their care, and children’s learning environments. This information was collected from the 2-year data collection on. In the kindergarten 2006 and 2007 collections, a wrap-around care provider interview was used for those children who were in kindergarten and had a before- or after-school care arrangement.

Teacher questionnaires and school data. Once the children entered kindergarten, their classroom teachers provided information on their classrooms and on children’s cognitive and social development. Information for the school each child attended was obtained from NCES’s school universe data files—the Common Core of Data (CCD) for public schools and the Private School Universe Survey (PSS) for private schools.

Father questionnaires. Fathers (both resident and nonresident fathers) completed a self-administered questionnaire, which asked questions about the particular role fathers play in their children’s lives; the questionnaires collected information about children’s well-being, the activities fathers engage in with their children, and key information about fathers as caregivers. Both resident and nonresident father questionnaires were included in the collections when the children were 9 months old and 2 years old. The resident father questionnaire was included in the preschool collection. No father questionnaires were included in the kindergarten collections.

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Periodicity

The ECLS-K:2011 data were collected in the fall and the spring of kindergarten (2010–11), the fall and the spring of first grade (2011–12), and the fall of second grade (2012) (data were collected from a 30 percent subsample in the fall of first grade and the fall of second grade).The study will continue to collect data in the springs of second grade (2013), third grade (2014), fourth grade (2015), and fifth grade (2016).

The ECLS-K collected data in the fall and spring of kindergarten (1998–99), the fall of first grade (1999) (data were collected from a 30 percent subsample in this round), and in the springs of first grade (2000), third grade (2002), fifth grade (2004), and eighth grade (2007).

The ECLS-B collected data when the children were about 9 months old (2001–02), about 2 years old (2003), about 4 years old (the preschool collection) (2005), and in the fall of kindergarten (2006 and 2007). Note that because of age requirements for school entry, children sampled in the ECLS-B entered kindergarten in two different school years. All study children were included in the kindergarten 2006 collection, regardless of their enrollment status or grade in school. The kindergarten 2007 collection included just a portion of the total ECLS-B sample: children who were not yet in kindergarten in the 2006 collection, children who were in kindergarten in the 2006 collection and were repeating kindergarten in the 2007 collection, and twins of children in these groups. The ECLS-B study ended with the kindergarten 2007 round of collection.

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