Research conducted at leading universities in the United States, Canada, and Europe has concluded that early childhood math skills are the best indicator of academic success. Below is published affirmation:

• “Early knowledge of math not only predicts later success in math, but also predicts later reading achievement even better than early reading skills. Young children have a surprising capacity to learn substantial mathematics, but most children in the U.S. have a discouraging lack of opportunities to do so. Too many children not only start behind, but they also begin a negative and immutable trajectory in mathematics, with insidious long-term effects. These negative effects are in one of the most important subjects of academic life and also affect children’s overall life course.” - University of Denver

• “Early academic skills appear to be the strongest predictor of subsequent scholastic success – early math skills more so than early reading skills.” - Phys.org

• “Our meta-analytic results indicate that such early math concepts as knowledge of numbers and ordinality were the most powerful predictors of later learning. -  Developmental Psychology
• Looking at six largescale longitudinal studies of children in the United States, Canada and Great Britain, Dr. Greg Duncan at UC Irvine and his colleagues analyzed the data to determine which early skills at school entry were associated with later academic achievement.  The results demonstrated that early math skills were the strongest predictors of later academic performance. - CaliforniaKindergartenAssociation.org