The report stated that there is plenty of work to be done to fully prepare children for kindergarten.

"Too many of our children are overweight," said Mandy Ableidinger, a spokeswoman for Action for Children. "Two- to 4-year-olds we're looking at are overweight. About one in five are starting kindergarten with untreated tooth decay issues, which impairs their ability to learn."

She said the growing number of families living in poverty also makes an impact.

"Something that just impacts school readiness in our state overall is poverty," Ableidinger said. "Poverty is increasing in North Carolina.

School Preparedness

Health care and poverty are two of the major issues that impact education, according to the report.

She said increasing poverty means that parents can't get the kind of nutrition that their children need.

"It means they can't get access to preventative medical care and preventative dental care and all of these things really impact a kid's ability to learn," Ableidinger said.

The report also examined whether schools are prepared for students.

"What they're facing though is an increasingly diverse student population," Ableidinger said. "For example, the number of Hispanic kids has risen 58 percent in the last five years. Schools need new training and new funding to handle these increasingly diverse populations of kids."

But the report found some good news, too.

"We have a very high immunization rate for our kindergarten students," Ableidinger said. "Some 98 percent of them are immunized when they start kindergarten, which is an incredibly high rate for a voluntary program.

"We have a little room to improve on our babies' and toddlers' immunization [rates] -- that's more like 82 percent, so we'd like to see that rate go up."

Ableidinger called on state lawmakers to take action.

"We'd like to see more state investment in child care subsidies," she said. "We need better health insurance for all our children across the state. At least 10 percent of our kids don't have health care, which is way too high a statistic."