Rural American Indian, Alaska Native Children Sharply Different than Other Rural Children on Some Measures in Early Childhood Longitudinal Study

JULY 9, 2005 | In comparison to other rural young children, American Indian and Alaska Native children are significantly more likely to experience positive discipline at home, but less likely to have certain early literacy skills when they enter kindergarten, according to a new analysis of baseline data in the federal Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS).

Rural Early Childhood commissioned Child Trends, a nonpartisan research organization, to analyze baseline data in the Kindergarten and Birth Cohorts of the ECLS, comparing subgroups of rural children in several major ethnic and income groups to each other and to groups of non-rural children in the same categories. Martha Zaslow, Ph.D., Brett Brown, Ph.D., and Dena Aufseeser of Child Trends performed the analysis.

This analysis of the American Indian and Alaska Native subgroups in the ECLS-K and ECLS-B fulfills part of the research agenda recommended by a White House task force in 1991. The American Indian and Alaska Native Research Agenda called for comparison of health and school readiness indicators in the federal Early Childhood Longitudinal Study for rural and non-rural American Indian and Alaska Native (AI-AN) children, and of the same indicators for rural AI-AN children and other rural children.

Rural Early Childhood will co-sponsor a forum July 28-29 on progress toward all of that agenda’s recommendations concerning young children. Early learning of American Indian and Alaska Native children is the focus of a major initiative of Rural Early Childhood because Native children are predominantly rural.

The ECLS baseline data reveals that rural American Indian and Alaska Native young children are at a significant advantage in terms of positive discipline and parental warmth. They are more likely than some other rural sub-groups to have parents who encourage them to play and allow them to safely explore their environments.

However, rural American Indian and Alaska Native children were the least likely of major ethnic sub-groups in rural America to be proficient at letter recognition upon kindergarten entry. The same children were only one-fourth as likely as rural white non-Hispanic children to be proficient at beginning sound recognition.

Native children also were more likely to have mothers who drank alcohol in the three months before pregnancy, to have mothers who smoked at the time of baseline data collection, and to be exposed to second-hand smoke in their homes.

A new Rural Early Childhood Brief with key findings concerning American Indian and Alaska Native children, and briefs on other findings from this rural analysis of the ECLS-K and ECLS-B baseline data, are available here. More details from the analysis will be available in a full report later this year.