COLUMBUS – Researchers at Ohio State say children are leaving kindergarten with many of the reading skills of first-graders and the gap between high- and low-achievers is narrowing in at least some areas.
“Children are better prepared when they enter first grade than they used to be. Kindergarten is the new first grade when it comes to learning reading skills,” said the study’s co-author, Emily Rodgers, associate professor of teaching and learning.
Their nationwide study, published in the current issue of the journal Educational Researcher, found that children entering first grade in 2013 had significantly better reading skills than similar students had just 12 years earlier and, in the four basic skills, low-achieving students narrowed the achievement gap with other readers.
In general, Rodgers and professor of educational studies Jerome D’Agostino say children are better readers at a younger age, but the study revealed gaps in more advanced reading skills, including actually reading text, where the gap widened.
“We’re probably spending too much time emphasizing basic skills for the low-achieving students, when we should be giving them more opportunities to actually read text,” said Rodgers.
A total of 364,738 children from 2,358 schools in 44 states were assessed during the 12 years of the study.
They took a screening test called An Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement, which measures four basic skills — letter identification, word recognition, ability to identify and use sounds and print awareness — as well as two advanced skills — writing vocabulary and text reading.
The results showed that average scores on all six parts of the test increased over the 12 years, suggesting that many children end kindergarten with the skills they used to learn in first grade.
D’Agostino and Rodgers say two influential national reports released in the 2000s and the No Child Left Behind law led to an increased emphasis on learning important skills related to reading achievement in preschool and kindergarten, the researchers said.
“These reports and legislation had at least some of the desired effect,” D’Agostino said. “But now we need to make sure that low-achieving students don’t fall further behind.”