Children who were read to several times a day were 1.6 times more likely to be rated by their teachers as being near the top of their kindergarten class in learning skills. They were also 2.3 times more likely to be near the top of their class in communication skills. Furthermore, children who had early exposure to books and reading were also better at performing mathematical tasks. In kindergarten, these children were twice as likely to be able to compare numbers than those who were read to less often, 2.6 times as likely to recognize geometric shapes and twice as likely to know simple concepts of time when they were aged 4 and 5. This relationship was observed regardless of the education of the child's mother and the income of the child's household.
Data are also available through custom tabulations.
Refers to number of children attending each type of educational program. These estimates should be used with caution due to small sample sizes.