Gradients in Children's Executive Functions during the Transition to Kindergarten

Background/Purpose:  Disparities in children’s academic achievement by parental education are well-established with findings demonstrating a full standard deviation gap between children of less-educated parents and children of more-educated parents at kindergarten-entry (Bradbury et al., 2015).  Very few studies, however, have examined disparities by parental education in critical skills associated with achievement such as the ability to control impulses, focus attention, and generate different ways of problem-solving- namely, executive functions. 

Yet, reducing inequality is a key objective of social work and a current national priority (National Academic of Sciences, 2017).   Therefore, it is particularly important to identify disparities in critical skills necessary for school achievement as early as kindergarten-entry and potential variations by parental education. Toward that end, we examine gradients by parental education in children’s executive functions at kindergarten-entry and whether parental beliefs and behavior, and the provision of learning resources and childcare may help explain potential gradients.

Method:  We used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten:2011 (n=12, 650).  Parental education, beliefs and behaviors, and the provision of learning resources and childcare were obtained via parent report.  Executive functions were measured using state-of-the-art, behavioral assessments (Woodcock-Johnson et al., 2001; Zelazo, 2006).

Results:  Controlling for demographics, multiple regression analyses demonstrated pronounced gradients in parental education. Children of parents with less than a high school education scored below their peers with a college-educated parent on inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and working memory (SD=.305, .343, .598, respectively). Those with a parent with a high school education also scored lower (SD=.158, .285, .493, respectively), and those with just some college scored lower (SD=.087, .178, .298, respectively).  

Results also demonstrated evidence for parental beliefs and behaviors, learning resources, and childcare obtainment in explaining gradients. Private center-based care was associated with better executive function skills, and parental beliefs and behaviors, and the provision of learning resources were also associated with better working memory.  These included parental belief in the importance of school readiness, and expectations that their child will obtain high levels of education, parent and child reading, and the number of books in the home.

Importantly, coefficients for parental education decreased when these variables were added to the model. Children of parents with less than a high school education scored below their peers with a college-educated parent on inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and working memory (SD=.250, .275, .494, respectively). Those with a parent with a high school education also scored lower (SD=.111, .225, .401, respectively), along with those with just some college scored lower (SD=.058, .141, .242, respectively).  Reductions were most pronounced for working memory.

Conclusions/Implications:  Our findings demonstrating substantial gradients in children’s executive functions based on parental education as early as kindergarten-entry. These findings, above and beyond differences in income, immigrant status and other demographics, suggest that reducing inequities in parental education may have important implications for children’s school readiness.  Moreover, addressing parental educational beliefs, along with providing books, childcare, and support for parent and child reading, might have important implications for social work policy and practice towards reducing early disparities in executive functions.