Rural Disparities in Baseline Data of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study: A Chartbook

This report shows the rural disparities in the baseline data of the Birth and Kindergarten Cohorts of the national Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS). The National Center for Rural Early Childhood Learning Initiatives, known as Rural Early Childhood, commissioned Child Trends to perform the analysis of key indicators of child well-being and early childhood services. Child Trends is a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization based in Washington, D.C. ECLS is a longitudinal study, by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), of two nationally representative samples of children, referred to as the Birth Cohort and Kindergarten Cohort. A program of the U.S. Department of Education, NCES makes the raw data collected in the study available to researchers who examine it in various ways. The study by Rural Early Childhood and Child Trends is the first to analyze the ECLS baseline data according to rurality. The chartbook contains a discussion of key findings related to child care use, early literacy skills, and mental health. It also contains sets of tables showing rural and non-rural rates for dozens of indicators, as well as rates within the rural and non-rural sub-groups by ethnicity, income range, and geographic region. This report provides rural to non-rural comparisons of selected indicators from the ECLS-K and ECLS-B baseline data focusing on three issues: school readiness, utilization of early care and education, the status of young American Indian and Alaska Native children, and the mental health and family life of young rural children. (Contains 129 tables and 17 figures.) [This publication was produced by Mississippi State, MS: National Center for Rural Early Childhood Learning Initiatives and Mississippi State University Early Childhood Institute.]