Census tracks 'child's day'
Parents report reading aloud, gifted offspring
You're in good company.
But you're going above and beyond if you praised your teenager.
Nearly three-fourths of kids younger than 6 received Mom and Dad's praise at least three times a day, compared to about 37 percent of teenagers, according to a smorgasbord of information gathered by the U.S. Census Bureau in "A Child's Day: 2003," a survey of nearly 10,000 moms or dads regarding more than 18,000 children.
The report only lists national numbers, not state breakdowns, and information was reported by parents, often within a short time frame of "within the past week." Comparisons are "significant at the 90 percent confidence level."
Some tidbits are startling. Reading, for example.
Whether parents said they read to children in the past week seemed to rise with educational attainment, income, and in two-parent homes. For instance, 23 percent of children whose parents didn't finish high school were never read to, compared to 4 percent of kids of parents with advanced degrees.
Also, "the percentage of Hispanic children who had not been read to in the past week ... was four times higher than the proportion of non-Hispanic white children," the report states.
Early literacy has been linked to early academic success. Reading to youngsters 20 minutes a day has been a state initiative for years. A reading program focusing on kindergarten through third grades has received $12.5 million from the state for the past three years, plus about $15 million kicked in by local school districts. The State Board of Education and the Governor's Office are pushing for $7.5 million to bring full-day kindergarten programs to at-risk children, giving them a boost before achievement gaps can start.
On the flip side is the gifted population of today's children. It's pretty high, the report states.
One in four students are considered gifted, meaning they were enrolled in special classes for gifted students or did advanced work in an academic field, according to the parent surveys.
Utah's numbers are hard to pin down. The State Office of Education reports that 24,400 high school students were in at least one concurrent enrollment class, which extends college credit to teenagers, in the 2003-04 school year, the State Office of Education reports. That's 19.8 percent of high schoolers.
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