A new report uncovers some good news about narrowing socioeconomic gaps in kindergarten readiness.
It compares the early life experiences of incoming kindergarteners in 1998 with those in 2010 using two large, nationally representative data sets called the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS). The data include survey information from a child’s parents and his/her teachers, as well as results from assessments of skills administered multiple times during kindergarten and elementary school.
Analysts examine, among other things, various readiness gaps at the tenth and ninetieth percentiles of the income distribution. For the most part, the data showed many encouraging signs: Across the board, analysts found that both high- and low-income young children in the 2010 cohort were exposed to more books and reading in the home than their 1998 peers. They also had more access to educational games on computers, and they engaged with their parents more both inside and outside the home.
These developments took shape despite the fact that other negative shifts in family characteristics have occurred in the twelve years between samples. Among families at the tenth percentile, the likelihood that a mother was married at the time of a child’s birth dropped five percentage points; fathers in the lowest-income families had the largest declines in full-time work (eighteen percentage points) compared to those in the highest-income group; and families at the tenth income percentile did not make any gains in college completion. (On the other hand, an analysis from the Manhattan Institute’s Scott Winship indicates that child poverty rates have declined over roughly the same period.)
Still, there’s been much progress on the early readiness front. The likelihood that low-income kindergarteners will use a computer three or more times each week doubled since 1998, for example (perhaps reflecting upward trends in home broadband access). There were increases across the board in income relative to “in-home enrichment activities”; that uptick was most pronounced among low-income children, whose parents are now more likely to sing songs to them, help with arts and crafts, play games, and play sports or exercise. Outside the home, more low-income parents are taking their kids to the library; the low-income versus high-income gap in library trips narrowed by about twelve percentage points over time.
Analysts also examined parents’ beliefs about their children’s readiness. In general, parents in 2010 thought that their kids needed to have more skills to be ready for kindergarten than parents did in 1998. For instance, they were more likely to think that their kids needed to know how to count to twenty or know their letters before entering school. Income breakouts show a widening gap in these beliefs, however, with middle- and high-income parents more likely to think that their kids need these skills versus low-income parents.
There is also a widening gap in formal preschool participation, despite increased public investment in preschool over the study’s timeframe. Particularly among low-income children, there was a shift away from formal childcare and into parental care (the rates were stable among middle- and high-income families). The authors posit that this may be due to the effects of the Great Recession, which occurred around the time that data were collected from the second cohort.
The bottom line is that parents appear to be more attuned to spending quality time with their kids. Whether this is a response to increased academic expectations in school, or more awareness of the importance of early childhood in forming well-adjusted adults, or something else, we don’t know. But it is very good news in an education landscape too often filled with the opposite.
SOURCE: Daphna Bassok, Jenna E. Finch, RaeHyuck Lee, Sean F. Reardon, and Jane Waldfogel, "Socioeconomic Gaps in Early Childhood Experiences," AERA Open (August 2016).
