Findings from the Third-Grade Round of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-11 (ECLS-K:2011): First Look. NCES 2016-094

The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-11 (ECLS-K:2011), is collecting information about the early educational experiences of a nationally representative sample of children who were in kindergarten or who were of kindergarten age in ungraded classrooms or schools in the 2010-11 school year. The data collection began in the 2010-11 school year, when the children in the sample were in kindergarten, and will continue through the spring of 2016, when most of the children in the sample are expected to be in fifth grade. This brief report provides information from the data collection conducted in the spring of 2014, when the majority of the students were in third grade. The ECLS-K:2011 provides information on students' status at school entry, on their transition into school, and on their progression through the elementary grades. The longitudinal nature of the ECLS-K:2011 data enables researchers to study how a wide range of family, school, community, and individual factors are associated with educational, socioemotional, and physical development over time. Information is being collected from the students, their parents and guardians, their teachers, and their school administrators. Information was also collected from their before- and after-school care providers in the kindergarten year. The ECLS-K:2011 is the third in a series of longitudinal studies of young children conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), within the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences. The other studies in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS) program are the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K) and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B). This report is intended to provide a snapshot of the children in the ECLS-K:2011 cohort who were in kindergarten for the first time in the 2010-11 school year and in third grade 3 years later during the spring of 2014.1 Information is presented on selected child and family characteristics, such as poverty status, parental education, family type, and primary home language (table 1), obtained when the children were in kindergarten. Information is also provided on the children's knowledge and skills in reading (table 2), math (table 3), and science (table 4) in the spring of third grade, both overall and by the selected kindergarten-year child and family characteristics. The following are appended: (1) Survey Methodology and Glossary; and (2) Standard Error Tables.