Root Causes: Early Grade Reading and Math Proficiency

Why is This Trend Important?

• Scores are rising, but the achievement gap remains. The 2007 NAEP results for 4^th Grade reading and math show that a significant gap remains across income level and race/ethnicity. [i], [ii]

• Income achievement gap. Low-income students (as measured by eligibility for the National School Lunch Program, set at 185 percent FPL) continue to score below higher income peers (those not eligible for the program), though the scores were higher in 2007 than in previous assessments. [iii], [iv]

• Racial achievement gap. Though nearly all groups showed small but statistically significant overall gains, only the White-Black gaps in reading and math at grade 4 were smaller in comparison to the gaps in 2005 and 1992. [v], [vi]

• Many students are chronically absent,  research shows that many young children are missing a month of instruction, or about 10 percent of the school year .

What are the Forces and Influences at Work?

• The proportion of children living in low-income families is rising. [vii] Between 2000 and 2007, the number of children under age 6 who were poor (100 percent FPL) increased by 24 percent, compared to 15 percent for all children ages birth to 18. [viii] American Indian, Latino, and Black children are disproportionately low-income – close to 65 percent of all children in each race/ethnicity category are low-income. In contrast, 29 percent of White children are low-income. However, Whites comprise the largest group of low-income children under age 6 (37 percent of all children). [ix]

• The number of uninsured children has decreased by 2 million since 1997 but nearly 9 million children remain uninsured and coverage rates of immigrant children have declined.  [x] Uninsured rates have dropped by roughly 25 percent for African-American, Hispanic, and white children, but African-American and Hispanic children are still more likely to be uninsured than white children. Hispanic children are disproportionately uninsured (40 percent of all children), compared to 36 percent White and 18 percent African-American. [xi]  About 3 in 10 children (32 percent) without health coverage are under 6. [xii]

•  We know more about interventions to promote early reading, and more children have access to state-funded pre-kindergarten programs. The National Reading Panel report provides a solid body of research on beginning reading, factors influencing early reading difficulties, and interventions to help struggling young readers gain literacy skills, which may have had a positive impact on teaching and learning in the preschool and early elementary years. [xiii] The improvement in academic achievement beginning in the 1990’s (as measured by NAEP) tracks the increase in state-funded pre-kindergarten programs during the same time period, leading some to suggest rising pre-K enrollment rates as leading indicators of subsequent increases in fourth grade test scores." [xiv]

• K-3 education environments. Gains from early childhood investments sometimes “fade out” when measured a few years later, [xv] which is attributed to lower quality in early elementary grades (K-3). [xvi] Low-income children are more likely to end up in low-resource schools that too often fail to meet sufficient levels of quality. [xvii] 

• Child Care Assistance has not kept pace with the growth in need. The federal Child Care and Development Block Grant has been virtually flat funded since 2002 but an additional 350,000 working families were low income in 2006 compared to 2002. The number of children receiving assistance has declined since 2000. Total spending has stagnated in recent years and remains below 2003 peak levels. Nineteen states made cuts in overall child care spending in 2006, compared to 22 states in 2005. [xviii]

• As early as kindergarten too many students are chronically absent. These absences can affect student performance, especially for low-income children. Chronic absence in kindergarten was associated with poor academic performance for students in 1st grade. For children living in poverty, the poor performance persisted through 5th grade. The findings from research reflect the realities that poor children often lack the resources to make up for time on task and are more likely to face challenges (such as unreliable transportation, unstable housing, or lack of health care) that make chronic absence occur again in subsequent years.[xix]

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