Research Findings: This study investigates contributions of the preschool classroom interpersonal environment to students' social competence in 1st grade. Participants were 862 ethnically/racially diverse children who attended public preschool classrooms serving low-income families. Systematic observations of 60 classrooms occurred across the…

The developmental sequence of the types of orthographic knowledge that children acquire early in reading development is unclear. Following findings of skilled reading, the orthographic constraints of positional frequency and feedback consistency were explored with a wordlikeness judgement task for grades 1-3 English-speaking children. The data…

A successful transition from kindergarten to 1st grade requires a positive combination of multiple dimensions of child competence. Using latent class analysis, we simultaneously examined the academic skills, work attitude, and social/behavioral competence of a large sample of Dutch kindergarten children to identify profiles of kindergarten…

A substantial literature documents the benefits of early childhood education and formal preschool experiences on children's school readiness, with low-income and otherwise disadvantaged children benefitting the most from these programs. However, these academic benefits often fade out as children age, and most disappear by the end of kindergarten…

We examined growth trajectories of writing and the relation of children's socioeconomic status and language and/or speech impairment to the growth trajectories. First-grade children (N = 304) were assessed on their written composition in the fall, winter, and spring, and their vocabulary and literacy skills in the fall. Children's SES had a…

School readiness assessment is a prominent feature of early childhood education. Because the construct of readiness is multifaceted, we examined children's patterns on multiple indicators previously found to be both theoretically and empirically linked to school readiness: social skill, interactions with parents, problem behavior, and performance…