Instruction Characteristics and Cognitive Achievement of Young Children in Elementary Schools

This ongoing Dutch study into the school careers of young children in elementary schools, facilitated by the Educational Priority Policy, has focused on the influence of school and class organization on linguistic and cognitive development. In this article, the development in word decoding, reading comprehension, and math of 3rd graders (6 years of age) is analyzed. The data are gathered in 28 elementary schools by means of tests, questionnaires, and logbooks. A multilevel analysis shows that for word decoding and reading comprehension differences in development caused by differences in instruction are very small. For math, on the contrary, there is a substantial proportion of variance at the class level. Instruction characteristics and years of experience by the teachers seemed to be important.