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Whether and to what extent kindergarten children's executive functions (EF) constitute promising targets of early intervention is currently unclear. This study examined whether kindergarten children's EF predicted their second‐grade academic achievement and behavior. This was done using (a) a longitudinal and nationally representative sample (N = 8,920, Mage = 97.6 months), (b) multiple measures of EF, academic achievement, and behavior, and (c) extensive statistical control including for domain‐specific and domain‐general lagged dependent variables. All three measures of EF—working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control—positively and significantly predicted reading, mathematics, and science achievement. In addition, inhibitory control negatively predicted both externalizing and internalizing problem behaviors. Children's EF constitute promising targets of experimentally evaluated interventions for increasing academic and behavioral functioning. 

We investigated whether and to what extent deficits in executive functions (EF) increase kindergarten children’s risk for repeated academic difficulties across elementary school. We did so by using growth mixture modeling to analyze the first- through third-grade achievement growth trajectories in mathematics, reading, and science of a large (N = 11,010) sample of children participating in the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort of 2011 (ECLS-K: 2011). The modeling yielded four growth trajectory classes in mathematics, reading, and science. We observed an at-risk trajectory class in each academic domain using a standardized scale. Children in the at-risk class initially averaged very low levels of achievement (i.e., about two standard deviations below the mean) in first grade. Their trajectories remained very low or declined further by third grade. Trajectories for other classes were also generally flat but started and remained at higher levels of standardized achievement. Deficits in EF, particularly in working memory, increased kindergarten children’s risk of experiencing repeated mathematics, reading, and science difficulties across elementary school. These predictive relations replicated across three academic domains following statistical control for domain-specific and -general autoregressors as well as socio-demographic characteristics. 

Whether executive functioning deficits result in children experiencing learning difficulties is presently unclear. Yet evidence for these hypothesized causal relations has many implications for early intervention design and delivery. We used a multi-year panel design, multiple criterion and predictor variable measures, extensive statistical control for potential confounds including autoregressive prior histories of both reading and mathematics difficulties, and additional epidemiological methods to preliminarily examine these hypothesized relations. Results from multivariate logistic regression analyses of a nationally representative and longitudinal sample of 18,080 children (i.e., the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Kindergarten Cohort of 2011, or ECLS-K: 2011) indicated that working memory and, separately, cognitive flexibility deficits uniquely increased kindergarten children’s risk of experiencing reading as well as mathematics difficulties in first grade. The risks associated with working memory deficits were particularly strong. Experimentally-evaluated, multi-component interventions designed to help young children with reading or mathematics difficulties may also need to remediate early deficits in executive function, particularly in working memory.