Young Children's Access to Computers in the Home and at School in 1999 and 2000.

Abstract

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is the primary federal entity for collecting, analyzing, and reporting data related to education in the United States and other nations. It fulfills a congressional mandate to collect, collate, analyze, and report full and complete statistics on the condition of education in the United States; conduct and publish reports and specialized analyses of the meaning and significance of such statistics; assist state and local education agencies in improving their statistical systems; and review and report on education activities in foreign countries. We strive to make our products available in a variety of formats and in language that is appropriate to a variety of audiences. You, as our customer, are the best judge of our success in communicating information effectively. If you have any comments or suggestions about this or any other NCES product or report, we would like to hear from you. Please direct your comments to: Or call toll free 1–877–4ED–Pubs Content Contact: Jerry West (202) 502–7335 Jerry.West@ed.gov iii Acknowledgments We wish to recognize the 20,000 parents and the more than 8,000 kindergarten teachers and first-grade teachers who participated during the first 2 years of the study. We would like to thank the administrators of the more than 1,200 schools we visited across the United States for allowing us to work with their children, teachers and parents, and for providing us with information about their schools. We are especially appreciative of the assistance we received from the Chief State School Officers, district superintendents and staff, and private school officials. We would like to thank John Bailey at the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology for his support during the planning and preparation of this report. Special thanks go to Sarah Kaffenberger of the Education Statistics Services Institute (ESSI) and Thea Kruger (formerly with ESSI) for their review of the existing literature on children's computer access, and to Andrea Timashenka of Pennsylvania State University at University Park for her quality control review of the report. (formerly with ESSI) for their hard work and dedication in supporting all aspects of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998–99 (ECLS-K) program. We appreciate the technical review comments provided by Bill Hussar (NCES) and (ESSI). We would also like to recognize the input we received from NCES staff members and the Educational Testing Service, under the direction of NCES—conducted the base-year and first-grade …