Tracking Students From the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998�/b>9

The National Center for Education Statistics sponsors its program on early childhood longitudinal studies in collaboration with other federal agencies to track children抯 cognitive development and growth from their earliest years of childhood through their subsequent schooling. As one who has followed the achievement gaps and differential progress of various groups of students from elementary through secondary school, I am struck by the fact that such differences are present consistently by fourth grade. This constant is evident in the National Assessment of Educational Progress fourth-grade scores and in U.S. fourth-grade scores in international mathematics, science, and reading assessments. The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998� (ECLS-K), now offers ample proof that such differences are obvious much earlier, indeed as early as kindergarten entry. Subsequent tracking of this cohort of kindergartners through first and third grades continues to show that while all children make considerable progress in the early grades, children who begin with an advantage maintain that advantage and may even widen the gap as they acquire more advanced skills faster than children who have one or more risk factors in their lives. It is also the case that children who start kindergarten with family risk factors tend to make fewer subject area gains than children without risk factors.

Clearly, the findings show a tremendous range in performance across third-graders. While almost all children by the end of third grade could recognize words and solve simple addition and subtraction problems, fewer than half (46 percent) were able to use background knowledge combined with sentence cues to understand the use of homo-nyms and only 42 percent demonstrated an understanding of place value in integers to the hundreds place. Twenty-nine percent were able to make interpretations beyond what was stated in text (e.g., make connections between problems in a narrative and similar life problems), and 16 percent could use rate and measurement to solve word problems.

ECLS-K is one of the first nationally representative studies to portray a full picture of early childhood development and educational experiences. Moreover, by collecting information from parents, teachers, and school officials, it also can sketch out the features in children抯 families, schools, and wider communities that may relate to children抯 educational progress and success. In this way, it can suggest not only conditions that put students at risk of school failure, but also opportunities that enable students to be successful.

The main study (kindergarten cohort) began in the fall of 1998 with a nationally representative sample of approximately 23,000 kindergartners from over 1,000 kindergarten programs. These children have been followed longitudinally through fifth grade, and plans are under way to continue to track their academic progress into eighth grade and beyond. The data from the 2005 collection will be eagerly anticipated in the coming years as the students move into middle school and adolescence.

The summary included in this edition of the Quarterly highlights children抯 gains in reading and mathematics over their first 4 years of school, from the start of kindergarten to the point when most of the children are finishing third grade. It also describes children抯 achievement status in reading, mathematics, and science at the end of third grade. It shows as well information on children抯 perceptions of their competence and interests in school subjects, their relationships with peers, and any problem behaviors they might exhibit. Comparisons are made in relation to children抯 sex, race/ethnicity, number of family risk factors, kindergarten program type, and the types of schools (i.e., public or private) they attended in the first 4 years of school. It is the fourth in a series of reports from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998�.