Healthy and Ready to Learn: Prevalence and Correlates of School Readiness among United States Preschoolers

Details

• Alternative Title:
  Acad Pediatr
• Personal Author:
  Ghandour, Reem M. ; Hirai, Ashley H. ; Moore, Kristin A. ; Robinson, Lara R. ; Kaminski, Jennifer W. ; Murphy, Kelly ; Lu, Michael C. ; Kogan, Michael D.
• Description:
  Objective:
  
  To assess the national and state prevalence of being “Healthy and Ready to Learn” (HRL) and associated sociodemographic, health, family and neighborhood factors.
  
  Methods:
  
  Cross-sectional analysis of the 2016 National Survey of Children’s Health, a nationally representative parent-reported survey administered by web and paper June 2016 to February 2017. Four domains were constructed from 18 items through confirmatory factor analyses: “Early Learning Skills”, “Social-Emotional Development”, “Self-Regulation”, and “Physical Well-being and Motor Development.” Each item and domain were scored according to age-specific standards as “On-Track”, “Needs Support”, and “At Risk” with overall HRL defined as “On-Track” in all domains for 7565 randomly selected children ages 3 to 5 years.
  
  Results:
  
  In 2016, 42.2% of children ages 3 to 5 years were considered HRL with the proportion considered “On-Track” ranging from 58.4% for Early Learning Skills to 85.5% for Physical Well-being and Motor Development”; approximately 80% of children were considered “On-Track” in Social-Emotional Development and Self-Regulation, respectively. Sociodemographic differences were mostly non-significant in multivariable analyses. Health, family, and neighborhood factors (ie, special health care needs status/type, parental mental health, reading, singing and storytelling, screen time, adverse childhood experiences, and neighborhood amenities) were associated with HRL. HRL prevalence ranged from 25.5% (NV) to 58.7% (NY), but only 4 states were significantly different from the U.S. overall.
  
  Conclusions:
  
  Based on this pilot measure, only about 4 in 10 US children ages 3 to 5 years may be considered “Healthy and Ready to Learn.” Improvement opportunities exist for multiple, modifiable factors to affect young children’s readiness to start school.
  
  
• Subjects:
  Child Child, Preschool Child Health Cross-Sectional Studies Humans Prevalence Residence Characteristics Schools United States
• Keywords:
  Child Development National Survey Of Children’s Health School Readiness
• Source:
  Acad Pediatr. 21(5):818-829
• Pubmed ID:
  33667721
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC10947794
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  CC999999/ImCDC/Intramural CDC HHSUnited States/
• Volume:
  21
• Issue:
  5
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:8fa56108e0c2ed947d3169c77013d93246eb27628fdb579d8e88976c1aa2352a
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/151752/cdc_151752_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 883.89 KB ]