Preschoolers Perform Better in Kindergarten

 Preschoolers perform well academically in kindergarten compared to children who do not attend preschools, reports latest federal data.

The study, released Friday, stated that children who received preschool experience at a center or a home-based program a year prior to their kindergarten did fairly well in math and reading evaluation. The report examined 73.7 million children between the ages 0 to 17 in the United States in 2012. They make up around 24 percent of the population of the country.

The study results showed that children with both parents working full-time or one full- and one part-time employed parent had higher math and reading assessment than those with only one parent working.

According to Barbara Willer, the interim executive director of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, the study results will help understand how far children will succeed in their life. She also said that most of the children do not receive pre-schooling and attend kindergarten directly. The reports found that those who did not attend preschool belonged to lower-income families.

This longitudinal study will track the KG students through fifth grade to find out the lasting effects on them due to different preschool experiences. Willer also noted that the number of children who attended state run preschools increased steadily last decade. However, the number decreased last year.

Other findings of the study revealed that older the children, the better the performance in kindergarten. It further found that female kindergarten students performed better than their male classmates in reading tests. But the study authors did not find much difference in their math and science scores.

According to the report, Asian and white students had better entry performance in all the subjects than students with other ethnic backgrounds.