Trajectories of the Home Learning Environment Across the First 5 Years: Associations With children???s Vocabulary and Literacy Skills at Prekindergarten

This longitudinal study out of NYU examines the connection between “home-learning environments” and school readiness by tracking a representative sample of 1,852 low-income children at ages one, two, three, and five. (The evaluation is based on things like the number of books read to the child and maternal responsiveness to the child’s requests.) There’s much to plumb here, but one takeaway emerges: Almost 70 percent of the low-income children with consistently strong home environments (ten percent of the total group) performed at or above the national averages for students from all socioeconomic backgrounds—demonstrating the home’s gap-closing potential. Unfortunately, none of the learning environments originally diagnosed as low in quality became literacy-rich by the time the children started pre-Kindergarten, implying that some children are already falling behind (and staying behind) after their first year of life. Now if we could only figure out how to help more parents more effectively play the role of their child’s first teacher.

Eileen T. Rodriguez and Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda, “Trajectories of the Home Learning Environment Across the First 5 Years: Associations With Children’s Vocabulary and Literacy Skills at Prekindergarten,” (New York, N.Y.: New York University, July/August 2011).