TANF status, ethnicity, and early school success

This article presents a secondary analysis of longitudinal data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten (ECLS-K), conducted by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The ECLS-K data are from a national sample of children who began kindergarten during 1998/9. The article reviews literature about the relationships among poverty, ethnicity, and early success in school, analyses three-year longitudinal data by student ethnicity and TANF status, and provides a discussion of policy implications. The findings suggest that, although many children from non-English-speaking backgrounds catch up with peers during the first three years of school, TANF status remains a good predictor of overall achievement in the third grade.