Predicting Poor Achievement in Early Grade School Using Kindergarten Scores on Simple Cognitive Tasks

In this study, kindergarten children's scores on nine cognitive tasks were evaluated as potential predictors of poor achievement in first grade. A set of five tasks successfully identified 83% of children who were poor readers in first grade, while just three tasks identified 72% of children who were poor achievers in math in first grade. There were a large number of false positives in the predictions to first grade achievement, but some of these children were poor achievers in subsequent grades. Many of the children who were poor achievers in reading or math were actually poor achievers in both academic areas. How such screening results might be used was discussed.