The purpose of this quantitative study was to analyze the ECLS-K:2011 longitudinal study to determine the impact the mother's education has on her child's kindergarten academic performance, growth and attainment from kindergarten through fifth grade, and the background characteristics that affect child academic development. This study employed a complex correlational design utilizing descriptive statistics, ANOVA, t-test, and regression analysis. The results of the study showed that a mother's education attainment level had a significant relationship to her child's academic performance in kindergarten and through fifth grade. Students whose mothers had higher levels of education scored higher than students whose mothers had lower levels of educational attainment. Overall, the ANOVA results found that 15.1% to 21.9% of the student assessments results on the reading, math, and science spring assessments could be explained by the mother's education level. Although there were several consecutive education categories with no statistical significance, the overall trend showed the performance of the students on all assessments were higher for children whose mothers had higher levels of education. Regression analyses revealed that the race of the child could explain 8.1% to 10.7% of the assessment results for reading, 10.3% to 15% for math, and 14.1% to 19.4% for science. When including the level of the mother's education level as a variable, the results displayed that 9% to 10.9% of the reading assessment data could be explained "beyond" the impact race had on the assessment, 8.5% to 9.3% could explained beyond the impact of race on the math assessment, and 8.8% to 10.5% of the results on the science assessment could be explained beyond the impact of race. Overall, the largest combined impact that race and mother's education level on the reading assessment occurred at the fourth grade with 21.5%, occurred at the fifth grade level with 24.3% for math, and occurred at the kindergarten level with 28.2% for science. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]