The National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER), sponsors a comprehensive program of special education research designed to expand the knowledge and understanding of infants, toddlers and children with disabilities.
NCSER Grantee Publication in Journal of Learning Disabilities
Paul Morgan, George Farkas, and Qiong Wu have published "Five-Year Growth Trajectories of Kindergarten Children With Learning Difficulties in Mathematics" in the July/August 2009 edition of the Journal of Learning Disabilities. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort, the researchers estimated the extent to which the timing and persistence of mathematics difficulties in kindergarten predicted children's first through fifth grade math growth trajectories. The results indicate that repeated learning difficulties in mathematics by the end of kindergarten robustly and reliably predicted children's mathematics growth over their subsequent five years of schooling. The study highlights the importance of systematic monitoring of kindergarten children's mathematics skills acquisition and the need for early intervention to prevent students from struggling in mathematics throughout elementary school.