A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

(Link to Press Release)
(Link to Report)

A quality early-childhood experience is one of the keys to success in school and in life. That's why this longitudinal study is so important - it will help us discover how to give all children the building blocks for an excellent education. I'm grateful to the staff at NCES for producing this report and for all the research they do to help improve education for all Americans.

Clear conclusions can be drawn from the data in this report, and there are important implications for education policymakers. I'd like to outline three of those.

First, for children from all backgrounds, kindergarten is an important place for learning. No matter how many risk factors they face - after a year of kindergarten, children's reading and math scores rise dramatically. They're better at basic skills like recognizing letters, shapes, and numbers. And they're better at sophisticated skills like adding, subtracting, and identifying "sight words."

Universal kindergarten may seem like a no-brainer, but in some states kindergarten is not mandatory. When I was Governor of South Carolina, I saw that many of the children who didn't attend kindergarten were the ones who needed it most. So I worked to make kindergarten mandatory in my home state. Universal kindergarten should be the norm nationwide as well.

Second, while the children who come to kindergarten vary widely in their capabilities, the group differences for the most basic skills are much smaller by the end of the year. This report identifies four risk factors - a single-parent household, family income supported by welfare, a mother who did not complete high school, and homes in which English is not the primary language.

Let me highlight one example of how kindergarten can make a difference for at-risk children. The percentage of children who can identify the letters of the alphabet rises from 65 percent to 94 percent over the course of the school year. The improvement for at-risk children is even more dramatic. Consider children whose mothers didn't finish high school - at the beginning of the year, 38 percent know their letters; by the end, it's 84 percent.

In other words, kindergarten is doing exactly what it's supposed to do - it's helping children, including those who are at risk, to pick up basic verbal and math skills.

The third result from this study that I find interesting is that kindergarten does not close the gap for more sophisticated skills. A few kindergartners can recognize sight words and understand words in context. By spring, there are some solid improvements among children with few risk factors, but at-risk children don't improve as rapidly. The results are similar for math.

I think it's important to note that while the gap in sophisticated skills remains, there is some evidence that all-day kindergarten may have at least a small effect on improving these skills. This corresponds to the common-sense notion that a teacher with limited time will focus on the basics and a teacher with more time will encourage students to do more advanced work. The evidence isn't clear, but I hope that we will find out more about the effects of all-day kindergarten as this longitudinal study progresses.

I also want to add a note of caution about expecting too much from kindergarten. If we think that groups of children who enter kindergarten with a wide range of skills will somehow leave kindergarten equally prepared for 1st grade, then we're being unrealistic.

Kindergarten can close some of the gaps, and we need to make sure all children get the most out of kindergarten. But we need to think long and hard about setting the kinds of policies that will help children enter school with a good start on learning.

There is no simple way to close these gaps. We need to approach the problem from all angles. A parent is a child's first teacher, and we know that reading with a child for a half-hour each day can have a tremendous impact on a child's development. So I urge parents to read with their children and talk to them, starting at an early age. National, state, and local policies should give parents the resources to make sure that children entering kindergarten are healthy, cared for, and ready to learn.

One great way to support parents is by providing voluntary pre-kindergarten for every family in American that wants it. Also, if these gaps persist as children move through school, we need to offer extra resources for students, parents, and teachers. That means smaller class sizes in the early grades. It means extra training for teachers. It means after-school and summer school opportunities in every community. It means mentors who can steer adolescents away from drugs and violence and toward college and a better life.

Last February, the president sent Congress an education budget that includes support for each of these initiatives. And even though the fiscal year ended 8 weeks ago, Congress has yet to pass it. Negotiators came to a good-faith compromise in October but a few Congressional leaders pulled the rug out from under their own negotiators and rejected the compromise.

The study we're releasing today demonstrates that kindergartners learn a lot over the course of about nine months. Kindergarten provides hope for children. Congress, too, can offer hope for America's schoolchildren. They can do this by passing a budget that reflects the high value of education in American life. And they need to do it sooner rather than later.

I want to thank NCES once again for this fascinating study. There is a treasure of information here for parents, educators, and policymakers. The information can help us all make better decisions about how to help our nation's schoolchildren achieve the American Dream.

Thank you.