PUTTING PARENTS IN THE PICTURE - MATERNAL REPORTS OF PRESCHOOLERS LITERACY AS A PREDICTOR OF EARLY READING

Emergent literacy research has demonstrated that children begin constr ucting notions of literacy during the preschool years and that early e xperiences support children's literacy growth. Given that parents may have valuable insight into their preschool children's Literacy develop ment, we examined the hypothesis that parental reports from the presch ool years could be good predictors of early literacy development once their children enter school. Drawing on data from a longitudinal study of literacy development among low-income children, we correlate repor ts prepared by parents when their children were three and four years o ld with the children's subsequent performance on individually administ ered tests in kindergarten and grade one and grade one teachers' evalu ations of children. Correlational analyses reveal significant correlat ions between parental reports and grade one teacher reports and assess ments. Regression models reveal that parental reports account for abou t a quarter of the variance in! kindergarten tests and grade one teach er assessments and over a third of the variance in a decoding assessme nt given near the end of first grade.