What Many Don’t Know About Early Literacy

A poll from the Pearson Foundation found that three-quarters of Americans assume that even if children enter kindergarten not ready for school, they will acquire the necessary literacy skills in elementary school to catch up with their peers. However, research shows that children who enter kindergarten behind are three to four times more likely to drop out of school when they get older. While the vast majority of those polled acknowledged that early childhood illiteracy is a problem, they did not recognize that reading to 3- to 5-year-olds can have significant impacts on children's academic success.

"It's common to under-estimate the importance of early literacy experiences for young children's later language and literacy development, especially those experiences before the age of 3," says Shannon Ayers, an assistant research professor at NIEER and a specialist on early literacy. "Experiences of a caregiver cooing back at an infant provide the basis for conversation turn taking, and singing lullabies and silly rhyming songs provide experiences with the cadence of language," she adds. "Lap reading and talking about stories and personal experiences with children offers exposure to story structure, print, and language (vocabulary development) in a comfortable, loving way that will provide the foundation for later learning."

NIEER discusses literacy in the preschool classroom and its link to academic and lifelong achievement in the policy brief Early Literacy: Policy and Practice in the Preschool Years.