The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS) program provides national data on children's status at birth and at various points thereafter, children's transition to nonparental care, early education programs, and school, and children's experiences and growth through the fifth grade. ECLS also provides data to test hypotheses about the effects of a wide range of family, school, community, and individual variables on children's development, early learning, and early performance in school. The Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 addresses four key issues: (1) school readiness, (2) children's transitions to kindergarten, first grade, and beyond, (3) the relationship between children's kindergarten experience and their elementary school performance, and (4) children's growth in math, reading, and general knowledge (i.e., science and social studies), and their progress through elementary school.

ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..

Datasets:DS0: Study-Level FilesDS1: Child DataDS2: Child Data: C23CW0 - child direct assessment data from both spring-kindergarten and fall-first grade (Online Analysis Only)DS3: Child Data: C23PW0 - parent interview data from both spring-kindergarten and fall-first grade (Online Analysis Only)DS4: Child Data: C123CW0 - child direct assessment data from fall- and spring-kindergarten and fall-first grade (Online Analysis Only)DS5: Child Data: C123PW0 - parent interview data from fall- and spring-kindergarten and fall-first grade (Online Analysis Only)DS6: Child Data: C24CW0 - child direct assessment data from both spring-kindergarten and spring-first grade (Online Analysis Only)DS7: Child Data: C24PW0 - parent interview data from both spring-kindergarten and spring-first grade (Online Analysis Only)DS8: Child Data: C124CW0 - child direct assessment data from fall-kindergarten and spring-kindergarten and spring-first grade (Online Analysis Only)DS9: Child Data: C124PW0 - parent interview data from fall-kindergarten and spring-kindergarten and spring-first grade (Online Analysis Only)DS10: Child Data: C1_4CW0 - child direct assessment data from all four rounds of data collection (Online Analysis Only)DS11: Child Data: C1_4PW0 - parent interview data from all four rounds of data collection (Online Analysis Only)DS12: Child Data: Y2COMW0 - child direct assessment data from fall-kindergarten and spring-kindergarten and spring-first grade (Online Analysis Only)

Children, and their families, teachers, and schools in the United States.

A nationally representative sample of approximately 22,000 children who enrolled in about 1,000 kindergarten programs (both private and public) during the 1998-1999 school year, and their families, teachers, and schools.

2013-08-08 The ECLS-K instrument matrix has been created.2006-04-05 An errata file was added to the data collection.