Facilitating the Abstract

Transition to First In this articlewe describethe natureof the first-

grade transitionand summarizeseveral studies
Grade: The Nature that have investigatedhow children'sschooling
proceeds over this period. Drawing on Begin-
of Transition and ning School Study data that include children's
marks and test scores plus informationabout
their parents and schools, we carriedout a lon-
Research on Factors gitudinal study of a large random sample (N =
790) of children who began first grade in Balti-
Affecting It more in 1982.Westudied effectson the transition
for childrenattending full-day ratherthan half-
day kindergarten,of living in differentkinds of
family arrangements,and of several other cir-
cumstances.We found that children with more
Doris R. Entwisle kindergarten,those whose families included co-
resident grandmothers,and those who did not
Karl L. Alexander change schools between kindergartenand first
JohnsHopkins University grade did betterover the transition,otherthings
being equal. We close with a list of implications
for practicebased on what is known about the
first-grade transitionand offer suggestions for
futureresearch.

In this article we provide an overview of the

nature and importance of the first-grade
transition. The first part describes the tran-
sition. We then summarize several quanti-
tative studies that have examined how the
circumstances of that transition affect stu-
dents' progress in school, drawing mainly
on data from the Beginning School Study in
Baltimore.

Nature of the First-Grade Transition

So far, surprisingly little is known about the
first-grade transition, yet how children ne-
gotiate the move to formal schooling has
important and long-lasting effects on their
school careers. In fact, this transition con-
The ElementarySchoolJournal stitutes a "critical period" for their aca-
Volume 98, Number 4
C 1998 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. demic and social development (Entwisle &
0013-5984/98/9804-0007$02.00 Alexander, 1989).

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352
The Critical Period
The critical period idea has its roots in
ethology (see Brauth, Hall, & Dooling 1991;
Newport, 1991) and is defined as a life stage
of limited duration where an unusual re-
sponse potential of an organism is coupled
with particular kinds of environmental
stimulation. A well-known example of a
critical period is imprinting in newborn
ducklings. For a period lasting just 24
hours, ducklings instinctively follow and
become attached to any large animal in their
vicinity, including humans. They have the
innate propensity to follow (an "unusual re-
sponse potential"), and in most cases the fe-
male parent (a "particular kind of stimula-
tion") is there to be followed, but this
sensitive period is of brief duration.
The existence of "hard-wired" critical
periods in the development of children is
debatable, but critical period imagery is
nonetheless useful for thinking about early
schooling. First, events during the earliest
years of school provide a "particular" kind
of stimulation: elementary schools are so-
cially organized in ways children have not
previously experienced and provide the
kind of stimulation society believes is essen-
tial for children's development. An unre-
lated adult (the teacher) is in control. Chil-
dren meet in classrooms with desks, books,
blackboards, clocks, bells, maps, and often
plants, animals, and mineral specimens de-
signed for their instruction and remain
there for several hours each weekday. The
presence of other children who share the
same goals and who are at about the same
level of competence provides a strong in-
centive to do well because human beings
seek social approval (peers) and at the same
time are profoundly rewarded by positive
reinforcement from an authority figure
(teacher). All these "particulars" provide an
arena rich in learning opportunities and a
social context that is unique to this life
stage.
Second, the particular kinds of environ-
mental stimulation provided in first grade
coincide with important internal changes in
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THE ELEMENTARYSCHOOLJOURNAL
children-they have an unusual "response
potential." Children's cognitive develop-
ment proceeds rapidly over ages 5-8. For
example, their memory span, general learn-
ing capacity, and speed of cognitive pro-
cessing all develop rapidly during this pe-
riod (Varnhagen, Morrison, & Everall,
1994). In Piagetian terms, they are shifting
from preoperational to concrete modes of
operational thought, beginning to test ideas
of invariance and causality, and starting to
form rudimentary conceptions of time,
number, and logic. For example, children
are able to understand that the number of
objects in a group is not changed when the
objects are rearranged in space. A dramatic
cognitive change occurs in their under-
standing of language at this stage because
they reorganize their filing system for
words. At age 5, when asked to give a word
in response to "went," they say "home"-
"went home." By age 8, when asked to give
a word in response to "went," they say "go"
("went-go"), showing they have learned the
substitution privileges of these two verbs.
"Go" almost never follows "went" in a sen-
tence, so children cannot have heard these
two words in contiguity, but they have de-
duced how and when one of these words
can substitute for the other. "Went" and
"go" have the same privileges of occurrence
in speech or text-"they go home/they
went home"-and children have deduced
this fact plus many others and use that in-
formation to construct a general theory of
language.
The first two grades constitute a critical
period, then, because the child's external
and internal worlds are undergoing pro-
found change at the same time. Over this pe-
riod, when children are separated from
their families and instructed in groups, their
own capabilities are simultaneously chang-
ing in ways that are propitious for learning
to read and think. As memory span in-
creases, for example, children find it easier
to remember number series and so are able
to acquire the rudimentary concepts of
mathematics.
MARCH 1998
 FIRSTGRADE 353

This ideal coupling of internal and ex-
ternal conditions for children's learning be-
gins to change as children approach the up-
per elementary grades. For one thing,
although there has been surprisingly little
effort to understand children's attitudes to-
ward school, their enthusiasm for school di-
minishes as they age. Older children rate
themselves as less smart, less good, and less
hardworking than do younger children and
are less likely to perceive themselves as able
(Blumenfeld, Pintrich, & Hamilton, 1986;
Blumenfeld, Pintrich, Meece, & Wessels,
1982). Purkey (1970) likewise reported that
children's self-perceptions become more
negative between the second and sixth
grades, and data for children in Baltimore
also show this. In first grade, 62% of Begin-
ning School Study children said they "like
school a lot," but by sixth grade, only 29%
liked school a lot. Small wonder that the
first few years of school make such a differ-
ence.
The critical period idea is useful mainly
because it directs attention to important is-
sues that have been overlooked in contex-
tual studies of education. First, because chil-
dren's cognitive skills are increasing
rapidly, the primary grades are a special
time. Second, developmental research has
focused much more on changes within the
child than on the social environments sur-
rounding the child (Bronfenbrenner &
Crouter, 1983), even though school learning
obviously does not depend wholly on the
child. Grades 1 and 2 also provide learning
conditions unlike those children experience
earlier or later because most elementary
schools, even those in depressed urban ar-
eas, go to great lengths to provide an emo-
tionally supportive environment at this
time. In later grades, this kind of sensitivity cational outcomes. On average, a random
to individual children and their needs is less
evident.
Fitting In
The transition into full-time schooling equated across a wide range of other char-
drastically reconfigures the child'ssocial roles acteristics including their standardized test
because social roles and expectations for scores when they began first grade and
children's behavior change a great deal over
the primary years. Also, social development
accelerates over ages 6-8 partly because
cognitive development accelerates. Six- and
seven-year-olds are becoming independent
from their families: they learn how to find
their way about the neighborhood, monitor
their own activities to some extent, and op-
erate away from the family, at least during
the school day. Unlike parents, teachers,
who are the "significant adult other" during
the school day, respond to children's social
class and ethnicity. They constantly com-
pare children against one another, if not al-
ways in terms of physical coordination or
physical attractiveness, certainly in terms of
mental quickness, cooperativeness, and sa-
voir faire. Children who slip easily into the
student role enhance their own develop-
ment. A child who has the temperament
and inclination to fit in well gets better
marks and gains more on standardized tests
in the early grades than does a child who
has fewer of those qualities (Alexander &
Entwisle, 1988).
But "fitting in" is a two-way street. Teach-
ers' own social origins influence how they re-
act to students. Other things being equal,
higher-status teachers tend to rate poor and/
or minority-group children lower than they
rate other children in terms of maturity and
classroom behavior. These teachers also hold
lower expectations for poor or minority-
group students. Children's gains on stan-
dardized tests and marks in first grade are
depressed by such teacher disaffection
(Alexander, Entwisle, & Thompson, 1987). In
short, social distance between teachers and
their first-grade students can lead students to
achieve less: it generates inequality of edu-
sample of African-American first graders in
Baltimore in 1982 received marks about
one-fifth of a grade lower than their white
classmates did, with children statistically

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354 THE ELEMENTARYSCHOOLJOURNAL

their economic backgrounds (Entwisle & Entwisle & Alexander, 1988), and later on
Alexander, 1988). these children are more likely to discon-
Still another part of "fitting in" is the cu-tinue high school (Consortium of Longitu-
mulative file that schools keep for each dinal Studies, 1983; Ensminger &
child. Records of marks, school problems, Slusarcick, 1992). The early grades are
and test data are accumulated in a folder "critical" then in the ordinary sense of the
that provides a paper trail following the word because whether or not children meet
child from first grade upward. The second- challenges at that stage has serious and
grade teacher is privy to all the information long-lasting consequences as far in the fu-
collected over first grade, the third-grade ture as investigators have searched (e.g.,
teacher is privy to all the information col- Alexander et al., 1994; Ensminger &
lected in the first two grades, and so on. The Slusarcick, 1992; Entwisle & Hayduk, 1988;
setting is ripe for self-fulfilling prophecies Kerckhoff, 1993; Pedersen, Faucher, &
and for labeling. Teachers' expectations in Eaton, 1978). How well children do in the
the early grades, which are shaped in part primary grades probably matters more for
by these dossiers, can affect students' school their future success than does their school
performance as much as 4-9 years later, performance at any other time.
even taking students' later ability level into The cumulativeness of school perfor-
account (Entwisle & Hayduk, 1988). mance has never been in doubt, but the ac-
tual data to support this linkage are sur-
Cumulative Nature of Schooling
prisingly sparse. Still, by the end of third
"Fitting in" is important for children be- grade, achievement test scores are fairly sta-
ginning school. In a study of fourth graders ble and the quality of children's perfor-
the effects of children's personal qualities mance is usually a good indicator of future
on achievement in that year were small, but school performance. In the standardization
carryover effects from the effects of the sample for the California Achievement Test
same child's personal qualities on first- (CAT) battery (McGraw-Hill, 1979), for in-
grade achievement were substantial stance, grade 3 reading scores obtained in
(Alexander, Entwisle, & Dauber, 1993). A the fall correlate .79 with the grade 3 scores
good rating in terms of classroom behavior the following spring; the similar correlation
by the first-grade teacher not only led chil- for the mathematics scores is .83. These cor-
dren to do well in that first year but actually relations are close to the reliability of the
affected the gains children made in grade 4 test, so they are at a practical ceiling. In
more than did the rating of the grade 4 Husen's (1969) large cross-national study,
teacher. First-grade performance is "criti- both intelligence scores and teachers' rat-
cal" because the cumulative nature of the ings in third grade were strong predictors
curriculum makes it hard for a child to of children's long-term educational careers.
achieve at a high level in fourth grade with- Kraus (1973), who followed children in
out achieving at a high level in earlier New York City for over 20 years,
similarly
grades. found that the most significant predictor of
The early administrative placements in adult status was the score obtained on
school that reflect social structure in the third-grade reading achievement tests.
larger society also have long-term conse- Pope, Lehrer, and Stevens (1980) likewise
quences. Compared to other children, and reported a correlation of .50 between a read-
if all else is equal, males, minority group ing test in kindergarten and children's read-
members, and/or children of low economic ing achievement in grade 5; Weller, Schnit-
status more often get low marks and/or fail tjer, and Tuten (1992) reported a correlation
a grade in elementary school (Alexander, of .57 between a reading readiness test
Entwisle, & Dauber, 1994; Bianchi, 1984; given at the start of first grade and scores

MARCH 1998

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 FIRSTGRADE 355

on tenth-grade reading and math tests (see press peers, and to forecast others' reactions
also Butler, Marsh, Sheppard, & Sheppard, as well as on their ability to read and do
1985). arithmetic. Feedback comes from many
sources, and much of it is evaluative. To be
As for marks, the child's first marks in first
grade strongly forecast marks throughout el- successful, they must learn to differentiate
ementary school and in some ways are an carefully among evaluators according to
even more reliable bellwether of future per- age and social status. Praise from some
formance than test scores because marks are classmates does not carry the same weight
sensitive to the child's gender, ethnicity, and as praise from others. It makes a difference
economic background. African-American whether one's "best friend" is the most or
students in Baltimore got significantly lower least popular child in the class.
reading and math marks than whites did, The compulsory nature of schooling
starting with their first mark in first grade, means that success is no longer guaranteed.
even though their beginning test scores and Adults are free to move-from one house to
home resources were not significantly differ- another, one job to another, one spouse to
ent from whites' (Entwisle & Alexander, another, or one hobby to another. A key
1988). consequence of this freedom is that adults
can improve their odds of being successful.
The Social Environment in First Grade If promotion at the present job is refused,
The life transition marked by the begin- they can move to another job; if they are
ning of children's formal schooling has no unhappy with their spouse, divorce is an
generally accepted name. However, in con- option. In fact, adults frequently respond to
sidering moral education Durkheim (1973) failure by trying another venue. Elementary
emphasized this developmental stage: school children do not have that luxury,
"One can distinguish two stages in child- however, because they are harnessed to a
hood: The first taking place almost entirely role at an institution that they must stick
within the family ... the second, in elemen- with, like it or not. Legally compelled to at-
tary school, when the child ... is initiated tend school, they usually have no choice
into a larger environment" (pp. 17-18). Per- about which school they attend, which
haps for this reason the significance of the teacher(s) they get, or what they will do
transition has attracted little attention, and while in school.
analyses of its consequences are few and far The shock of the first-grade transition is
between. Children's new social environ- hard to appreciate. One way for adults to
ments in first grade, however, challenge imagine it is to recall their own reactions to
them in many ways. being placed in a total institution, for ex-
Over the first-grade transition the basis ample, how they felt upon becoming an in-
of rewardschanges. When children leave the patient in a hospital, or starting a new job,
protective circle of the family, they are rated or going into the army. Hospital admission
according to how well they perform com- may be the best analogy. First graders, like
pared to others, whereas in the family they hospital patients, lose control over life's
were evaluated mainly in terms of how well small daily routines of eating or elimina-
they did with respect to their own record. tion. They have little control over when
As 4-year-olds they were bigger and more they can get a drink of water or use the
capable than when they were 3, for instance, bathroom. First graders, like patients, can-
and so they were always rated positively. not leave the room without getting permis-
Furthermore, success in school supposedly sion. First graders take a prescribed curric-
depends on academic performance, but ulum (course of treatment), move through
children soon discover that they are rated a preordained daily schedule (patients are
on their ability to please the teacher, to im- awakened when nursing shifts change), and

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356
are evaluated (poked or questioned) ac-
cording to criteria they do not understand.
First-grade children quickly learn that
they are being evaluated but are often con-
fused about what matters (Dornbusch &
Scott, 1975). As Finn (1972, p. 395) noted:
"In school [the child] first discovers that not
all students receive the same reactions from
the teacher, the principal or from others. At
this age, the reactions to him are not colored
by his achievement record so much per-
haps, as by his sex, color, physical appear-
ance, or his exhibiting proper-that is, doc-
ile-behavior." Children get marks in topics
like "language" without knowing exactly
what "language" is supposed to be. They
may be placed in the lowest reading group
merely by chance (Entwisle, Alexander, &
Olson, 1997), and their marks may even de-
pend on what an older sibling has done
(Seaver, 1973). Small wonder that on enter-
ing "big school," many children are seri-
ously threatened and fear failure for the first
time.
Also, children are necessarily evaluated
with respect to their classmates. This means
that the possibility of an unfavorable com-
parison is outside of children's control be-
cause it depends on how talented their
classmates happen to be. Elementary
schools enroll students who tend to be
much alike, so small differences among chil-
dren are magnified. The absolute differ-
ences among the top 15 students in an arith-
metic class may be small, but these
differences loom large in the eyes of chil-
dren, teachers, and parents.
The most credible evidence supporting
the seriousness of the first-grade transition
is that relatively small differences at this
time in children's performance and adjust-
ment to school not only persist but enlarge
in subsequent years. Differences on stan-
dardized tests of reading (the California
Achievement Test) for Baltimore children
from "high" and "low" socioeconomic
groups when they began school were about
20 points. This difference amounts to about
half a standard deviation in first grade. Af-
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THE ELEMENTARYSCHOOLJOURNAL
ter 5 years in school this difference had
grown to over 60 points (see Entwisle et al.,
1997).
Facilitating the First-Grade
Transition: Research Review
In this section of the article we review a se-
ries of quantitative studies that offer evi-
dence about resources that help children ne-
gotiate the first-grade transition. Except for
Head Start, most of the findings come from
the Beginning School Study (BSS), a longi-
tudinal project in Baltimore that has fol-
lowed several hundred randomly selected
African-American and white students from
the time they started first grade in 1982 up
to the present. This archive is rich in school
outcome information (test scores, marks, re-
tention status, absences, etc.) and in infor-
mation related to parents' and children's
characteristics. It differs from most other
studies of children's early development in
that it contains measures of school context
(school integration status, socioeconomic
status levels of school, teachers' ethnicity,
etc.) and is large enough to join the contex-
tual and individual information about stu-
dents in multivariate models. Full details on
the statistical analyses in BSS studies cited
here are omitted but are available in articles
published elsewhere but cited in this article.
Family Structure Effects:
Entwisle et al. (1997)
Many studies show that children in
single-parent families do not do as well in
school as children in two-parent families ei-
ther in terms of their standardized test
scores or in terms of adapting to the student
role. Prominent among the reasons pro-
posed to explain this linkage is the dearth
of economic resources in single-parent
homes. But an additional explanation is the
lack of "another pair of hands," that is, the
time and effort a second parent could con-
tribute in helping the child adjust to school
and do well there. The BSS archive contains
some information as to how these two ex-
planations account for the school perfor-
MARCH 1998

mance of children from single-parent fami-
lies.
Entwisle et al.'s (1997) analysis centered
on the gains children made in reading com-
prehension over the first year of elementary
school as measured by the California
Achievement Test. The BSS children were
divided into three groups according to fam-
ily type: (1) two-parent families, (2) one-
parent families in which single mothers
shared a residence with at least one other
adult, and (3) single mothers who were the
only adults in the household. The notion
here is that in one-parent families where
mothers are the only adult, both economic
resources and time are in relatively short
supply, whereas in one-parent families who
share residences, the "extra hands" may be
there even though economic resources are
short.
As would be expected from national
studies (McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994; Zill,
1996), BSS children from two-parent fami-
lies started school with higher scores on
standardized tests of reading comprehen-
sion and math concepts than children in
single-parent families (McGraw-Hill, 1979).
However, by the end of the first year, chil-
dren in families where mothers shared a
residence (i.e., "mother-other" families) had
gained the same amount in reading com-
prehension as those in two-parent families,
but both groups had gained significantly
more than children in mother-alone fami-
lies. These gains in children's reading test
scores were evaluated with statistical con-
trols to equate the three family groups ac-
cording to children's test scores when they
began first grade, race, gender, family size,
mother's age, kindergarten attendance,
school type attended, and several other
variables that tapped parents' psychologi-
cal and economic resources. The test score
advantage of the children in mother-other
families over those in mother-alone families
held up under this full set of controls, but
the advantage of children in two-parent
families faded when parents' psychological
and economic resources were controlled.
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FIRSTGRADE 357
We interpret these patterns as showing that
differences in economic resources are the
major reason that children in two-parent
families did better than children in single-
parent families. But they also showed that
children in single-parent families did better
if their mothers shared a residence than if
they lived alone, and this effect was not tied
to economic resources. In fact, the economic
resources available to both single-parent
groups were much the same.
Why did children in mother-other fam-
ilies do better? The data show that as they
started first grade they had better workhab-
its and better readingmarksthan children in
mother-alone families, with test scores con-
trolled. In addition, their beginning scores
were a little higher, and this initial advan-
tage also helped their first-year records look
better. Children in mother-other families
were better able than children of other sin-
gle parents to make the transition into full-
time schooling.
Looking further into the characteristics
of the mother-other families, we found that
a minority (40%) consisted of mother-
grandmother combinations, whereas in al-
most all the other families the mother
shared a residence with other relatives (sis-
ters, aunts, etc.). Only the children in the
"grandmother" families had significantly
better work habits. Children in families
where the additional adult was not a grand-
mother had work habits like those of chil-
dren in mother-alone families. (Work habits
involve paying attention, finishing assign-
ments, etc.) We suspect, but cannot prove,
that children who resided with grandmoth-
ers as well as with mothers benefited from
"another pair of hands" attached to a per-
son who helped monitor and supervise
them over the preschool years. This surmise
agrees with Furstenberg's (1976) finding
that, in families where single mothers
shared a residence with grandmothers, chil-
dren had better cognitive scores in the pre-
school period than did children who lived
with mothers only, and it also agrees with
Kellam, Branch, Agrawal, and Ensminger's
358
(1975) research indicating that children who
lived with grandmothers adapted better to
first grade than those who lived in other
kinds of single-parent families.
Head Start
Early evaluations of Head Start concen-
trated on changes in children's IQ, and the
findings in this regard were disappointing.
Children who had been allocated randomly
to Head Start gained about 8 IQ points more
than control-group children when tested in
first grade, but this advantage disappeared
by the end of third grade. Nevertheless,
follow-up data showed that over their en-
tire school careers, the Head Start children
had been held back (retained) less often and
had been assigned to special education less
often than their control-group counterparts.
Because the early Head Start studies were
small (the largest involved about 100 chil-
dren), the long-term advantages for Head
Start children of remaining "on time" in
school and in mainstream classes were not
apparent when the studies were evaluated
one at a time. Still, these two consequences
of Head Start, which became apparent
when data from several studies were
pooled (Lazar & Darlington, 1982), were
enormously important for children's later
lives. Head Start children were more likely
to graduate from high school, and after they
left high school, they were more likely to be
employed (Consortium of Longitudinal
Studies, 1983, pp. 443 ff.).
Because data are lacking from either
teachers or the schools that Head Start stu-
dents attended, there is no way to deter-
mine exactly how the Head Start program
helped children avoid retention or special
education. Still, in the BSS and every other
study of retention known to us that cities
year-by-year retention rates, these rates are
highest in first grade, next highest in second
grade, and so on. It seems likely that the
temporary elevation of Head Start chil-
dren's IQs and the other transient positive
effects on their marks and achievement test
scores enabled these children to do better in
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THE ELEMENTARYSCHOOLJOURNAL
first grade than their control-group coun-
terparts (see Woodhead, 1988).
Doing better in first grade is critical be-
cause it can have substantial effects on the
likelihood of being retained. In the BSS, for
example, children who lived in mother-
grandmother families had better work hab-
its than other children did when they
started first grade--an advantage that soon
faded like the Head Start children's IQ ad-
vantage-but the mother-grandmother
children were almost never retained in first
grade. The BSS analyses showed that the
positive effects of residing in a mother-
grandmother family were also transient.
Nevertheless, over the first 5 years of
school, children in the mother-grandmother
group had a cumulative retention rate of
only 27% compared to 50% for children liv-
ing in other types of single-parent homes.
We suspect, although we cannot know for
certain, that the long-term advantage favor-
ing Head Start children in terms of retention
rates likewise came about because of the
small advantage they had in first grade.
Kindergarten Experience: Entwisle,
Alexander, Cadigan, and Pallas (1987)
Although in the second half of the twen-
tieth century public kindergartens have be-
come virtually universal in the United
States, not much is known about their ef-
fects on children's subsequent educational
careers. Kindergarten could benefit children
for two main reasons. The first, derived
from a cognitive perspective, is that attend-
ing kindergarten could teach children cog-
nitive skills or enhance their cognitive de-
velopment. For example, children who
learn letters and sounds in kindergarten
may learn to read more easily in first grade.
The second perspective draws on a life-
course approach. It hypothesizes that, by
providing anticipatory socialization and
role rehearsal, kindergarten could help chil-
dren adjust to the student role. For first
graders who have attended kindergarten,
first grade is not a "new" experience in that
they have to some extent become accus-
MARCH 1998

tomed to being separated from home, work-
ing in groups, and following instructions.
The two types of benefits-cognitive and
socioemotional-need not be mutually ex-
clusive, of course.
One BSS study (Entwisle et al., 1987) fo-
cused on how the amount of kindergarten
experience (full-day, half-day, or no kinder-
garten) affected BSS children's standard-
ized achievement test scores in verbal com-
prehension and math concepts at the time
they beganfirst grade and also on children's
test gains over the first year. It examined, in
addition, how the amount of kindergarten
impinged children's socioemotional status
in first grade, such things as their personal
maturity and marks in conduct. Finally, it
examined how kindergarten experience af-
fected the marks that teachers gave first-
grade children in reading and math, con-
trolling for their achievement test scores
and the socioemotional indicators. Teach-
ers' marks could be sensitive to children's
kindergarten background, either because
kindergarten could teach children specific
subject matter (cognitive effects) or because
it socializes children into the student role
(socioemotional effects).
The analyses used the amount of kin-
dergarten as a predictor of various first-
grade outcomes, net of children's prekin-
dergarten experience and net of children's
race, gender, initial test scores in reading
and math, teacher's rating of child's per-
sonal maturity and conduct, their parents'
characteristics, and several other control
variables. The cognitive outcomes evalu-
ated were children's CAT scores in reading
comprehension and math concepts at the
beginning and end of the first-grade year
and their marks in reading and math during
first grade. The affective or socioemotional
outcomes that were evaluated were the stu-
dents' first- and fourth-quarter marks in
conduct; personal maturity; expectations
for their own performance in reading, math,
and conduct early and late in the year; and
their popularity with peers.
The amount of children's kindergarten
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FIRSTGRADE 359
attendance positively affected cognitive
outcomes early in the first grade: fall CAT
scores in both the verbal and the math do-
mains and first-quarter marks in reading
and math were all higher for children who
had attended full-day kindergarten. There
were only borderline effects on the fourth-
quarter mark in reading. The number of ab-
sences for children with more kindergarten
experience was significantly lower, but
there were no significant effects on personal
maturity, conduct marks, or peer popular-
ity, and for 10 other "socioemotional" vari-
ables there was only one borderline effect
that involved children's fall expectations in
math.
Despite the complexity of the analyses,
they tell a straightforward story. Aside from
the number of absences, kindergarten af-
fected cognitive variables exclusively: CAT
scores in the fall and spring, and first-
quarter and fourth-quarter marks in read-
ing and math. Effects of kindergarten on fall
CAT scores, fall marks, and end-of-year
marks were positive. There were no signifi-
cant effects for the affective/socioemotional
outcomes.
Effects of kindergarten on the cognitive
outcomes were generally stronger for
African-American than for white children.
For African Americans, the amount of kin-
dergarten had significant positive effects on
fall CAT scores in reading comprehension
and on first marks (for boys, on the math
mark; for girls, on both reading and math
marks). There were also borderline effects
for African-American boys on the math
CAT and the end-of-year reading mark. For
whites, the amount of kindergarten had
only borderline effects on girls' fall CAT
scores and boys' end-of-year marks in read-
ing. For white girls, more kindergarten was
associated with fewer days absent (border-
line), and for African-American girls this ef-
fect was fully significant.
The major findings of this study are
clear when it comes to choosing between
the "cognitive" and the "socialization" per-
spectives as the explanation for kindergar-
360
ten effects because it is mainly the cognitive
outcomes-CAT test scores in reading com-
prehension and math concepts and marks
in both reading and mathematics early in
the year-that were affected by the amount
of children's kindergarten experience. The
evidence is not consistent with a socializa-
tion hypothesis because the amount of kin-
dergarten did not affect children's expecta-
tions, marks in conduct, personal maturity,
or peer popularity. The evidence shows a
cognitive "spurt" early in the year for chil-
dren who attended kindergarten, especially
for African Americans. This advantage was
short-lived, however, because the total ef-
fect of the amount of kindergarten on
spring CAT scores was negligible. The tran-
sient nature of kindergarten effects resem-
bles the advantages conferred by Head Start
or by the child's residence in a mother-
grandmother family.
The findings of this study agree with
prior research comparing children who
have attended kindergarten with those who
have not. In these studies, achievement and
mental maturity are prominently men-
tioned as being affected by kindergarten,
but effects are not long-lasting, and no ef-
fects are reported for personality measures
(Williams, 1973). The BSS study provides a
more robust test of the cognitive status ver-
sus socialization explanations for effects of
kindergarten than previous research does,
however, because the sample is large and
diverse and because many other variables
are controlled, including the amount of chil-
dren's prekindergarten experience and their
parents' education level.
Children Who Do Exceptionally Well in
First Grade: Pallas, Entwisle,
Alexander, and Cadigan (1987)
Children's progress in the early years of
school is thought to be important for their
later achievement, but most sociological re-
search skirts an inclusive accounting of the
social and personal processes that underlie
early achievement. The study reported in
this article used a modified school process
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THE ELEMENTARYSCHOOLJOURNAL
model to examine factors that contributed
to unexpectedly large gains on standard-
ized tests of reading comprehension made
by some children in the BSS sample.
To focus on "exceptional cases"-be
they students, classrooms, or schools
(Alexander, McPartland, & Cook, 1981;
Klitgaard & Hall, 1977)-entails a twofold
challenge. The first is to identify an appro-
priate set of exceptional performers. The
second is to uncover the characteristics that
distinguish the exceptional performers
from their unexceptional counterparts. The
clues identified sometimes provide useful
insights because the process of achievement
could differ for the average and the excep-
tional child. More important to note, how-
ever, is that success is not necessarily the
obverse of failure. Children may suffer from
many problems-hearing or vision prob-
lems, difficulties posed by coming from a
dialect-speaking home, immaturity, lack of
parental encouragement, excessive ab-
sences, and so on-but ameliorating one or
more of these problems, even if it is possi-
ble, will not necessarily lead to outstanding
achievement.
In this study, which focused exclusively
on why some children performed excep-
tionally well in first grade, we used a tele-
scoped version of an earlier model to pre-
dict gains in scores on verbal tests. The
predictor variables fell into four categories:
the child's personal characteristics, perfor-
mance measures of the child, parent's char-
acteristics, and teachers' characteristics.
Streamlining the model and grouping the
independent variables focuses attention on
whether there are distinctive resources that
support exceptionally high achievement by
some students during their first year of for-
mal schooling.
A series of logistic regression analyses
left us with an uncomplicated view of some
complex results. Exceptionalgrowth in ver-
bal performance across first grade was as-
sociated prominently with indicators of the
students' psychological maturity or tempera-
ment and with some characteristicsof teach-
MARCH 1998

ers. Other noncognitive measures of stu-
dents, most notably gender and race, and
parent/family background variables, such
as the parents' expectations or story read-
ing, did not shed light on why some stu-
dents made large verbal gains and others
did not. For example, children's marks did
not discriminate between students who
were exceptional performers and other chil-
dren's standardized reading test scores.
(This early BSS study did not include family
structure-one-parent versus two-parent-
among the predictor variables.)
Personal maturity distinguished children
with good prospects for outstanding verbal
growth in the first grade from those whose
gains in performance were only average. The
various items in this scale-being enthusi-
astic and being able to concentrate, among
others-suggest ways in which personality
factors could contribute to learning, either di-
rectly or by way of the teachers' positive re-
actions to such traits. Higher ratings of per-
sonal maturity also distinguished children
with relatively little ability who were pro-
moted at the end of first grade from other
children who had comparable ability but
were held back (Cadigan, Entwisle,
Alexander, & Pallas, 1988).
The "teacher variables" that were sig-
nificant (and had the largest effects) were
school climate as perceived by the teacher
and the teacher's work-relatedconflict. The
climate scale was the sum of responses to
four items such as "For most faculty, teach-
ing here is [very unpleasant, very pleas-
ant]." The work-related conflict scale was
the sum of six items, five of which were
adapted from a scale on teachers' stress
(Pettigrew & Wolfe, 1982). For example, one
item was "Trying to resolve conflicts be-
tween parents and the school is a difficult
and frustrating part of my job."
Positive school climates promoted strik-
ingly high growth in the verbal perfor-
mance of these first graders. An increase of
1 standard deviation in the climate measure
raised the probability of a high gain in the
achievement of students by almost 10%.
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FIRSTGRADE 361
Also, students of teachers who reported
high levels of conflict with parents or school
administrators were more likely to do better
than expected. Conflict may be healthy and
constructive if it arises from teachers' strug-
gles to do well.
In sum, the resources that helped children
do exceptionally well in terms of gains on
standardized tests in reading comprehension
were their own psychological assets and their
teachers' feelings about work and the work-
place. These latter resources are "contextual,"
that is, they are found in the classroom/
school environment. Most research so far on
the first-grade transition has investigated the
individual rather than the contextual factors
that explain schooling.
Implications for Research
and Practice
1. More purely descriptive research is
needed on the transition into kindergarten
(Ladd & Price, 1987) and into first grade
(Entwisle & Alexander, 1989, 1993;
Reynolds, 1991, 1994; Reynolds &
Bezruczko, 1993), especially for ethnically
and socioeconomically diverse samples.
The BSS data, for example, show that full-
day kindergarten confers more benefits for
African-American than for white children.
2. Strong efforts are needed to get all
children into preschools. About 95% of U.S.
children attend kindergarten. In terms of
center-based care before kindergarten,
Head Start enrolls about 40% of eligible
4-year-olds and 20% of 3-year-olds, but
even with Head Start and all other center-
based programs combined, only about 60%
of 4-year-olds in families with incomes un-
der $15,000 were involved in preschools in
1991, and children whose parents were
dropouts were least likely to be enrolled
(U.S. Department of Education, 1994). The
Head Start evaluations (Barnett, 1996; Con-
sortium of Longitudinal Studies, 1983;
Lazar & Darlington, 1982) and the BSS data
leave no doubt that schooling prior to first
grade confers enormous benefits. These
benefits derive from improvements in chil-
362
dren's cognitive status that ease the first-
grade transition. Children who do better in
first grade do better in the later grades
(Alexander et al., 1994). The lack of facilities
for the schooling of disadvantaged children
prior to kindergarten is a major way that
differential tracks for students of various
family income levels take an early hold on
children. In other words, inequities in early
schooling resources linked to families' so-
cioeconomic status are a major source of so-
cioeconomic status differences in children's
later school careers.
3. Full-day kindergarten can help chil-
dren from disadvantaged backgrounds do
better in first grade, but many of the least ad-
vantaged children do not attend public kin-
dergartens. Parents need to be informed of
the importance of kindergarten "full day."
4. More research is needed on the first-
grade transition because relatively small
differences at this time in children's perfor-
mance and adjustment to school not only
persist but enlarge. Differences on stan-
dardized tests of reading comprehension
(California Achievement Test) for Begin-
ning School Study children in Baltimore
from high versuis low socioeconomic
groups when they began school are about
20 points, for example, a difference of about
half a standard deviation. By the end of el-
ementary school (beginning grade 6), how-
ever, this difference grew to about 1.5 stan-
dard deviations.
5. Children whose families have more
resources show more growth on standard-
ized tests, but the yearly gains that children
make grow smaller over the elementary
years. Because increments in test scores are
much greater at the time of the first-grade
transition than later, benefits of interven-
tions designed to help offset social inequi-
ties affecting children in the early years are
likely to be greater than for interventions
later on.
6. The variance across test scores inevi-
tably gets larger over time. Therefore, the
predictability from first-grade scores to
scores in grades 5 or 6 is better than the pre-
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THE ELEMENTARYSCHOOLJOURNAL
dictability from grade 1 to grades 2 or 3. A
key implication of the increased variance in
later grades is that effects of early interven-
tions may be underestimated if students are
not followed long enough.
7. Staying in the same school, staying
with same peers, and minimizing the num-
ber of other life transitions like household
moves or marital disruptions probably also
help children make the transition into first
grade. More research is needed on effects of
multiple transitions.
8. Research is also needed on how the
number of early transitions can be reduced,
even by keeping children in the same school
for kindergarten and first grade.
9. Much more research is called for on
how marks affect early school outcomes.
Marks have strong effects on test score gains
over first grade, even after test scores at the
beginning of the year and many other vari-
ables are taken into account. Because marks
are reinforcing, and because marks set par-
ents' and children's expectations, they are
critical for the early schooling process (see
Entwisle et al. 1997).
10. The large number of different marks
first graders receive and the vague defini-
tion of many kinds of early marks seem un-
warranted. The BSS first graders were
marked in 30 subjects, for example, and in
an earlier study Entwisle and Hayduk
(1981) found that the definitions of some
first-grade subjects varied widely from one
teacher to the next. Some teachers included
spelling as part of language, for example,
whereas others did not.
Although this agenda may seem daunt-
ing, the likelihood of benefits from research
on the first-grade transition is high. The pre-
school period has captured researchers'
attention mainly because of Head Start pro-
grams for 3- and 4-year-olds, but kindergar-
ten programs for 5-year-olds are important
too. In the case of both, researchers have al-
most totally neglected contextual effects. The
time has come to remedy this oversight and
to look much more carefully at school con-
texts in first grade.
MARCH 1998
 FIRSTGRADE 363

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