46% of K kids at-risk

Forty-four percent of children start kindergarten with at least one risk factors related to their home lives that affects their readiness for school, a new study released today by the Sesame Workshop shows. These risk factors are associated with lower achievement, reading and math delays and dropping out of school, among other negative outcomes.
Children with all four of the risk factors examined in the analysis were almost a year behind their low-risk peers in reading and math. The analysis also measured students’ kindergarten readiness, as reported by teachers, and found that students with more risk factors were less likely to be ready for school in both academic and behavioral domains.
“There has not been an examination of children’s’ school readiness of this magnitude in more than 10 years and it’s important to us to understand the needs of children as they enter school,” said Jennifer Kotler Clarke, a vice president at Sesame Workshop. “Given the risk factors children face, which puts them at a disadvantage for school success, we are continuing to find ways to use our educational content to help change these outcomes.”

The analysis was performed by Mathematica Policy Research. It used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class for 2010-11, which follows a nationally representative sample of more than 18,000 kindergartners. The conclusions about children's readiness for kindergarten was based on a subset of about 10,000 children who were first-time kindergartners in 2010.