Source: National Center for Education Statistics – Retrieved July 25, 2012
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) recently released First-Time Kindergartners in 2010-11: First Findings From the Kindergarten Rounds of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-11 (ECLS-K:2011), providing a snapshot of 3.5 million kindergartners who were attending kindergarten in the U.S. for the first time in the 2010-11 school year. Key findings include:
- Reading and math assessment scores were lowest for first-time kindergartners in households with incomes below the federal poverty level and highest for those in households with incomes at or above 200 percent of the federal poverty level.
- Assessment scores increased with parental education level.
- Kindergartners with a primary home language of English scored higher in reading and math than those coming from homes with a primary home language other than English.
Kindergartners with parents whose highest level of education is a Bachelor’s degree or higher had a lower BMI (body mass index) than those whose parents’ highest level of education is a high school diploma/equivalent or lower.
