Article
Predicting kindergarten academic skills: Interactions among child care, maternal education, and family literacy environments

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Abstract

This investigation used structural equation modeling to examine sources of children's reading, vocabulary, general information, mathematics, and letter recognition skills upon entrance to kindergarten. Potential predictors included ethnicity, gender, child IQ, family literacy environment, maternal education, and months in child care centers. Family literacy environment had positive causal links with four of five academic measures. Greater number of months in child care centers was associated with higher mathematics scores among children from less educated mothers who scored low on a measure of family literacy environment. In contrast, no effects of child care were found for children from mothers with more education. Implications include the need for strong parental involvement in children's development and subsidized child care for children in need.

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      Citation Excerpt :

      Caregivers liking reading, buying books for their children, and discussing books with children, are all linked to significantly better reading skills among students in our sample. This is consistent with past research, which has found that family input in reading ------such as investing in books, encouraging independent reading, and reading together as a family------significantly raises the reading skills of students (Campbell, Voelkl, & Donahue, 1997; Christenson, Rounds, & Gorney, 1992; Christian, Morrison, & Bryant, 1998; Davis-Kean, 2005; Sukhram & Hsu, 2012), and that having books and resources readily available provides students with opportunities to read and practice their skills at home (Morrow, 1999; Vanobbergen, Daems, & Van Tilburg, 2009; Weigel, Martin, & Bennett, 2006). A lack of family inut in reading may also be driving the poor reading outcomes of left-behind children in our sample.

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