Early math skills predict later academic success

Early math skills predict later academic success
A study involving 16,387 children showed no correlation between behavioral problems in elementary school and subsequent scholastic achievement, but early math skills played a big role. Credit: Michelle S. Kim / University Communications


“Until recently, there has been little agreement on this topic,” he notes. “Most kindergarten teachers recognize the inability to follow directions, trouble working independently or in groups, and a lack of academic skills as factors associated with difficult transition to the school environment.”

However, one National Research Council report argues that social and emotional aptitude is just as important as language and cognition in young children’s scholastic achievement. Another NRC report emphasizes the importance of early acquisition of linguistic skills. And the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics urges high-quality math instruction for 3- to 6-year-olds.

To address this issue, Duncan and colleagues identified six population-based data sets – involving 16,387 children – that included measures of reading and math competency, attention skills, pro-social behavior, and antisocial and internalizing behavior taken around the time of school entry, as well as measures of reading and math competency taken later in the primary or middle school years.

“We found that only three of the school-entry measures predicted subsequent : early reading, early math and attention skills, with early being most consistently predictive,” Duncan says.

“Early behavior problems and social skills were not associated with later reading and math achievement. These patterns generally held both across studies and within each of the six data sets examined.”

His analysis is widely viewed as providing a clear answer about the relative role of school-entry skills and behaviors: Early academic skills appear to be the strongest predictor of subsequent scholastic success – early math skills more so than early reading skills.

"A student’s school-entry ability to pay attention and stay on task is modestly predictive of later achievement, while early problem behavior and other dimensions of social and mental health issues are not at all correlated,” Duncan elaborates. “If is defined as having the skills and behaviors that best predict subsequent academic success, concrete numeracy and literacy skills are decidedly more important than socio-emotional behaviors.”

He and Katherine Magnuson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently completed a second study using two large data sets (2,843 children) and the same achievement, attention and behavior measures. They determined that K-5 students with persistently low math skills were much less likely to graduate from high school or attend college.
Surprisingly, chronic reading problems were not predictive of these outcomes, after accounting for the fact that children who struggle with reading tend to also struggle with math. In contrast to the first study’s findings, persistent antisocial behavior was correlated to dropping out of high school and not attending college. But chronic difficulty paying attention and internalizing behavior were not predictive of this.

The math results were quite striking. Children with persistent math problems in elementary school were 13 percentage points less likely to graduate from high school and 29 percentage points less likely to attend college.

“The next level of research should focus on why math skills – which combine conceptual and procedural competencies – are the most powerful predictor of subsequent achievement and attainment,” Duncan says. “Experimental evaluations of early math programs that focus on particular skills and track children’s reading and performance throughout elementary school could help identify missing causal links between early skills and later success.”

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Citation: Early math skills predict later academic success (2011, April 28) retrieved 17 July 2019 from https://phys.org/news/2011-04-early-math-skills-academic-success.html

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Apr 28, 2011
Could it be that intelligence correlates well with later accademic success? If they did not cancel out the effect of intelligence on the accademic proficiency of the children, they might just have found the skill - in this case math - that is the most effective measure of IQ at a young age.

Apr 28, 2011
Oh? How about parents who teach their kids to read and do math early are the same kind of parents who will help(push) the student to achive greater academic success?

Or how about Schools grade/reward students (through yearly tests) on Math and Reading primarily and there for students who are not doing well in those categories would become frustrated and give up on achiving through that system?

So could we also say that removing the standards for Reading and math as a judgement of success, would also allow for later life success (the article defined this as graduating high school and going to college)

Apr 28, 2011
@ bloodyanarch
Well, being a rowdy student should also evoke a lot of negative reactions from the teachers and adults in general, and the study above pretty much rules out any effect of this negative feed-back. So why should the "frustration" you mentioned have a larger impact?

The study, however, is flawed if it does not try to compensate for the effect of intelligence, and see what is really the effect of math knowledge. If they don't, policy makers could be fooled to spend a lot of money teaching young kids math, which may have little effect when compared to spending the same amount of money on other efforts.
