On Saturday, March 13, the Obama administration released its blueprint for revising the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which would ask states to adopt college- and career-ready standards and reward schools for producing dramatic gains in student achievement. The proposal challenges the nation to embrace educational standards that…

This report addresses the following four questions by reporting on the impacts of Head Start on children and families during the children's preschool, kindergarten, and 1st grade years: (1) What difference does Head Start make to key outcomes of development and learning (and in particular, the multiple domains of school readiness) for low-income…

This study examines the usefulness of a screening process implemented in the context of a Head Start home visit and compares families who screened positive for substance abuse with those who did not on an array of child and family indicators important for healthy child development. The sample included 1,105 low-income families with preschool-age…

The early elementary teacher must find a reasonable solution to the question of how to best meet the needs of incoming 5-year-olds. This study reviews recent research on the academic and emotional needs of young students and on existing programs dealing with school readiness. Brief annotations are presented for 54 research articles. These articles…

In response to the fact that technical standards for screening and placement tests must be more rigorous than those for readiness tests, the predictive validity of the Gesell School Readiness Tests (GSRT) was examined. The purpose of the GSRT, a commonly used screening instrument, is the assessment of children's developmental behaviors to aid in…

The 1978 South Carolina Basic Skills Assessment Act mandated that a readiness test be administered to each beginning first grade student, and that the results be used to plan appropriate instruction. The Cognitive Skills Assessment Battery (CSAB) was selected for this purpose. This study was designed to determine if the CSAB provides adequate…

The validity of using readiness tests for placing children in regular or 2-year kindergarten programs was studied in 9 Virginia school districts with a total enrollment of 17,662 in 1986-87. Four tests were evaluated; none were impressive predictors of performance on tests administered at the end of kindergarten. (SLD)

This "Third Annual Report Card" looks at improvements in the cradle-to-career educational pipeline, the areas where Boston has made modest progress but still has a great deal of work to do, and the places where observers have failed to see the gains that are needed to ensure that Boston is a city of opportunity for all. This report card…

Of 223 children who were coded as buy-a-year (BAY), overplaced (OP), or traditional (TR) based on their Gesell placement status, there were no significant differences between TR, BAY, or OP children on referrals or classification or on receipt of speech and language service, remedial reading, remedial math, or counseling. (Author/CL)

This article presents some pressing challenges facing early care and education policy and practice around the world and then highlights diverse country responses to these challenges with the goal of informing American decision-making. It focuses on three key cross-national challenges that are particularly relevant to current debates in the United…

Recent interest and investment in early childhood education as a means of promoting children's school readiness has prompted the need for clear definitions of school readiness. Traditionally school readiness has been viewed within a maturationist frame, based on a chronological set-point, which led to the emergence of readiness testing. Following…

This exploratory study used structured tasks as direct measures of approaches to learning to examine a potentially important domain of school readiness that is comprised of the multiple ways children engage in learning situations. A structured task designed to measure problem-solving flexibility was found to relate to a subset of a teacher rating…

States and the federal government have invested in early care and education programs with an explicit goal of improving school readiness for low-income children. These investments, aimed at strengthening the quality of care and supporting families' access to high-quality settings, are based in part on a confluence of research findings showing a…

This study reports on the developmental functioning levels of children from birth through age 2 in early intervention services and children ages 3-5 in early childhood special education services at the time of entry into services, using data from the Oregon Early Childhood Assessment System. The assessment system contains data on the assessed…

The aim of this study is to explore the possible relationships between the readiness and reading and writing performances of a group of children who are first graders in an elementary school in Turkey. The states of children in terms of school readiness, sound-letter relationships, and phonemic awareness were determined individually during the…