School readiness and later achievement.

Abstract

Using 6 longitudinal data sets, the authors estimate links between three key elements of school readiness--school-entry academic, attention, and socioemotional skills--and later school reading and math achievement. In an effort to isolate the effects of these school-entry skills, the authors ensured that most of their regression models control for cognitive, attention, and socioemotional skills measured prior to school entry, as well as a host of family background measures. Across all 6 studies, the strongest predictors of later achievement are school-entry math, reading, and attention skills. A meta-analysis of the results shows that early math skills have the greatest predictive power, followed by reading and then attention skills. By contrast, measures of socioemotional behaviors, including internalizing and externalizing problems and social skills, were generally insignificant predictors of later academic performance, even among children with relatively high levels of problem behavior. Patterns of association were similar for boys and girls and for children from high and low socioeconomic backgrounds.

Social and behavioral skills and the gender gap in early educational achievement

“…Duncan et al's (2007) recent meta-analysis of six datasets included analyses of the impact of social and behavioral skills in kindergarten on academic outcomes in third grade with the ECLS-K sample using this same set of dependent variables. Their focus is neither on gender differences in social and behavioral skills nor of the impact of gender differences in social and behavioral skills on gender differences in academic outcomes.…”

“…13 As noted above, we address potential endogeneity in the analysis of covariance models by using instrumental variables regression, and we estimate IV regression models using both instrumented contemporaneous and lagged measures of social/behavioral skills. Duncan et al (2007) also used the analysis of covariance strategy to estimate models for the effects of academic and social/behavioral outcomes on academic outcomes as of first and third grade, using both multiple-imputed and non-multiple imputed estimation strategies, as we did.…”

“…The term "non-cognitive skills" illustrates the lack of specificity in conceptualizing as well as measuring these skills. Duncan et al (2007) note that psychologists classify many of these skills under the categories of either "cognitive selfregulation" or "emotional self-regulation." "Cognitive self-regulation" includes planning, sustaining attention, effortful control of attention or action, task persistence, and inhibition of impulsive responses.…”

“…Research suggests that social and behavioral skills have particularly strong effects on teacher-rated academic achievement, especially at the start of elementary school (Ladd et al, 1999;Lin, Lawrence, and Gorrell, 2003). Duncan et al (2007) argue this is because early elementary teachers evaluate student progress on a broader set of tasks that includes turning in assignments on time, getting along with others, and showing 4 involvement in classroom activities.…”

“…A second challenge to our conceptions about the links between gender, class, behavior, and academic achievement comes from the recent and well publicized study by Duncan et al (2007). Based on their re-analysis of multiple sources of data on children in early elementary school, Duncan et al argue that cognitive attention problems are the main factor accounting for the correlation between aggression or other behavior problems and academic achievement (Barriga et al, 2002;Frick, 1991).…”