The Kindergarten Readiness Research Program

Recent research indicates that children's learning-relatedskills (including self-regulation and social competence) contribute to early school success. The present study investigated the relation of kindergartenlearning-relatedskills to reading and math trajectories in 538 children between kindergarten and sixth grade, and examined how children with poor learning-relatedskills fared throughout elementaryschool on reading and math. Latent growth curves indicated that learning-relatedskills had a unique effect on children's reading and math scores between kindergarten and sixth grade and predicted growth in reading and math between kindergarten and second grade. In addition, children with poor learning-relatedskills performed lower than their higher-rated peers on measures of reading and mathematics between kindergarten and sixth grade, with the gap widening between kindergarten and second grade. Between third and sixth grade, this gap persisted but did not widen. Discussion focuses on the importance of early learning-relatedskills as a component in children's academic trajectories throughout elementaryschool and the need for early intervention focusing on children's self-regulation and social competence.