“One in four kindergartners come from low-income families and enter school not fully ready to learn, a report from the Pritzker Children’s Initiative of the J.B. and M.K. Pritzker Family Foundationand the Bridgespan Group finds.

The report, Achieving Kindergarten Readiness for All Our Children: A Funder’s Guide to Early Childhood Development from Birth to Five (67 pages, PDF), estimates that nearly half the twelve million low-income children under the age of 5 nationwide are at risk of not being fully ready for kindergarten when they enter and of falling behind from the start. According to the study, children who start kindergarten ready for school have an 82 percent chance of mastering basic skills by the age of 11, compared with 45 percent for kindergartners who are not school-ready. Targeted preventive investments in high-quality early childhood programs can help bolster kindergarten readiness and build the cognitive and character skills that children need to do well in school and in life, the report argues, in turn reducing the need for costly remediation. However, the United States vastly underinvests in early childhood education, especially in the critical period from pregnancy to age 3.”

More: http://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/one-in-four-kindergartners-not-ready-to-learn-study-finds

Stephen