C L E Study Looks for Keys to Early School Success Kindergartners start school with a wide range of early childhood experiences, skills, and knowledge. A government study is taking a close look at kindergartners as they start school and will track them through their primary grades so the nation's schools can better meet their diverse needs. New unpublished analyses focusing on ethnic-minority classrooms and gender and age differences.
Some children live in homes where they are read to every day.
Other children are sung to every day. Some live with a mother and father, and others live with grandparents or a single parent. When those children enter kindergarten, they bring with them a vast range of early childhood experiences, skills, and knowledge. The government wants to know how those differences affect children throughout their early grades so schools can better meet their needs. The first full report of the project, America's Kindergartners , released in February 2000, was based on assessments of the students and surveys of the parents and teachers in the fall of 1998.