A new national study shows that most children enter kindergarten with beginning reading skills and nearly all know numbers and shapes. Furthermore, most children start school with good social skills and are in good health. The report presents baseline data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99, a study of 22,000 kindergarten children. The study found that 82 percent of children enter kindergarten with print familiarity skills, such as knowing that print reads from left to right, and 66 percent recognize letters.
Some children can recognize words and a very few can understand words in simple sentences.
The subjects entered private and public kindergartens in the fall of 1998. Under the project, the pupils will be regularly tested in math and reading and observed for physical well-being and social development in school and at home. On average, according to the study, African American and Hispanic children, children from welfare homes, and those whose parents have less education had significantly fewer early reading and math skills, exhibited more problem behaviors, and were less healthy. This new study will continue to follow the same sample of children through the fifth grade, regularly gathering data on their reading and math achievement, social skills, physical development, and school experiences. The study will reveal whether differences that exist when children enter school persist or change over time.