An Uneven Start: Indicators of Inequality in School Readiness. Policy Information Report

The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K) follows a nationally representative sample of children from kindergarten through fifth grade. This study analyzed the first results from the ECLS-K about kindergartners performance on a variety of reading and mathematics tasks, and it gathered valuable contextual information on their home reading experiences. These first results show a picture of inequality in reading and mathematics readiness for school. The report provides indicators of the types of children who may be educationally at-risk when they begin school. It also considers disparities in children's home reading experiences. Asian and white students were more likely than children in other racial and ethnic groups to be proficient across all reading tasks. Overall, girls were more likely than boys to be proficient in letter recognition and in recognizing the beginning and ending sounds of words, although these differences were not large. Socioeconomic status (SES) was related to proficiency across all reading tasks, and nearly all racial/ethnic differences disappeared when children were grouped into similar levels by SES. A similar pattern was apparent for mathematics. Overall, almost half of all parents reported reading to their children daily, with Asian and White parents more likely to read to their children daily than Black parents or Hispanic parents, although these differences were not large. Data show that children come to kindergarten with a variety of preschool and home experiences and with varying levels of school experiences. Policymakers should be aware of the complexities of these data when planning for effective kindergarten experiences. Supplemental tables and figures are presented in an appendix. (Contains 36 figures and 9 tables.) (SLD)