Parent and Teacher Reports of Kindergarten Learning Behavior and Later Reading and Mathematics

Research Findings: Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010–11, we examined how spring kindergarten parent and teacher reports of approaches to learning contributed to explaining directly assessed reading (N = 10,555) and mathematics (N = 10,531) one year later. Within each common-response sample, weighted models controlled for prior same-domain achievement, age, sex, and socioeconomic status. Confidence intervals used 80 JK2 replicates. The reports correlated .252 in the reading sample. Parent reports added 0.143 percentage points of explained reading variance beyond teacher reports (95% CI [0.014, 0.272]). Teacher reports added 1.402 points beyond parent reports [0.940, 1.865]. The corresponding mathematics increments were 0.037 [−0.023, 0.097] and 0.608 [0.367, 0.849]. The ordering persisted after response probability weighting and in comparisons of three similar items. Practice or Policy: Researchers choosing measures for kindergarten studies can distinguish the need to observe learning across home and school from the need to explain later academic performance. For the latter purpose, the gain from each report depends on the information already available.