In the present study, the authors use the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort of 1998Cohort of -1999 examine the extent to which family, school, and neighborhood factors account for the impact of socioeconomic status (SES) on children's early reading. Through the use of hierarchical linear modeling techniques, growth curve models were estimated to depict children's reading trajectories from kindergarten to 3rd grade. Family characteristics made the largest contribution to the prediction of initial kindergarten reading disparities. This included home literacy environment, parental involvement in school, and parental role strain. However, school and neighborhood conditions contributed more than family characteristics to SES differences in learning rates in reading. The association between school characteristics and reading outcomes suggests that makeup of the student population, as indexed by poverty concentration and number of children with reading deficits in the school, is related to reading outcomes. The findings imply that multiple contexts combine and are associated with young children's reading achievement and growth and help account for the robust relation of SES to reading outcomes.
, as well as Francene Barbour, Joan Gutierrez, Patti Vinci, and Jenny Smith at the Survey Operations Center and all of the Mathematica field and telephone staff who collected the data. The research brief also benefited from careful editing by Betty Teller. We are also grateful for the contributions of our partners at Juarez and Associates and the Educational Testing Service. Most of all, we offer our gratitude to the staff, families and children of the 60 FACES 2009 programs across the country, who once again opened their doors and shared their time with us.
The authors would like to express their appreciation to our Project Officer Maria Woolverton and other federal staff at OPRE and the Office of Head Start. We thank the Mathematica team, including
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