Kindergarten is no blank slate.

A study released this week reports that many California students -- even on that very first day of class -- are already well behind their peers academically.

Research from the Rand Corp.'s California Preschool Study Project, which included Merced County, show that the achievement gap in second- and third- grade classrooms can be traced back to those same students when they entered kindergarten.

This phenomenon is now being called the "readiness gap." And like the achievement gap found in older grades, kindergartners who are English learners, have parents with less than a high school education, are black and Hispanic or are from low-income families are the ones who are starting out behind.

"The readiness gap is really most profound for the subgroups that are in the greatest existence in Merced County," said Gaye Riggs, Merced County Office of Education's assistant superintendent of early care and education.

The study found that 45 to 49 percent of first-graders and 33 to 57 percent of kindergartners from 17 California school districts with the most students in those achievement gap categories did not meet reading standards for their age level at the end of the school year.

Fast-forward to second- and third-grade standardized testing results, where Rand found that 52 percent of second-grade students and 63 percent of third-grade students did not achieve grade-level proficiency in English-language arts. "The same groups of children starting behind are staying behind," said Rand economist Lynn Karoly.

The second part of the study concluded that getting kids into educational-based preschool programs could narrow the gap, but California's current preschool programs are not fully meeting the needs of their students.

Merced County was one of the four counties used as a case study in this part of the research, Riggs said. Rand researchers looked at the many different publicly run preschools in the area to get a better idea of "how funding flows to all these programs."

While looking at Merced, San Diego, Los Angeles and San Mateo Counties' preschool framework, Rand researchers found a "complicated array of programs" that sometimes struggle between offering high-quality educational-based child care and keeping costs down for children from low-income families.

Linda Kaercher, Head Start director for the Merced County Office of Education, said her child care program has been able to do both. "The entire focus of the Head Start program is closing the gap," she said. With some Head Start preschool classrooms made up of 98 percent English learners, language development is a major focal point of the program's teachers. "It affects everything," Kaercher said. Without a grasp of the language, she added, no other subject can be learned.

The curriculum used in the county's Head Start program -- which offers preschool education to income-eligible families -- also focuses on "developmental application." This is where students are asked to learn and use a concept, rather than just to memorize and recite numbers and letters. "We're continually trying to improve the quality of our programs," Kaercher said.

While Head Start continues to try to improve, Rand will continue to look at the state's preschools as it works on two additional parts of the study, due out in January and later in the spring.

The study was requested by several state governmental groups to see what improvements need to be made in preschool education.

The study, Riggs said, "is really groundbreaking work." And while all the data may not be positive, Riggs said she is glad to have them. "We need to know," she said. "It's the only way to address the issue."