As the nation has embraced the need to graduate every student ready for college and careers, high school reform has emerged at the top of the education agenda. Many local and state leaders are implementing strategies to address low performance and close achievement gaps. As federal policymakers look ahead to opportunities to support this…

These proceedings present five papers and other highlights of a symposium held to stimulate efforts to provide continuity and support for children and families in transition from early childhood to early elementary school programs. These papers are included: (1) "Connecting with Preschools: How Our Schools Help (and Fail to Help) Entering…

Reports results of Dutch study of presuppositions about teachers' diagnostic skills in determining school readiness. Lists a sequence of 5 different levels of functions and behaviors of 13 cognitive functions used in the study. Concludes that teachers accurately judged the cognitive levels of children who were shown less school ready by an…

The Road to Readiness component of the Center on Families, Communities, Schools, and Children's Learning focused on individual, family, and community supports and obstacles to school readiness. Several projects of the initiative are described, focusing on a chart developed to help parents encourage a child's early speech. (SLD)

Young children follow a fairly consistent pattern in their acquisition of language. This pattern is important because language develops rapidly and has been shown to affect later school readiness. A study published in the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, examines for the first time how the quality of childcare affects the development…

In this article, we describe our efforts as project coordinators to negotiate directions and meanings at the initial stages of a childcare curriculum development project for children from birth to age five in the Province of New Brunswick, Canada. Understanding curriculum as a complex relational dynamic that is shaped by the multiple social and…

A study was conducted to determine the relationship between learning styles and school readiness within two groups of 5- and 6-year-old primary school children. The first group was composed of 15 preschool children who watched an average of 5 hours of the television program "Sesame Street" per week; the second group consisted of 29…

Guidelines for parents who are preparing their child for his or her first day at school are provided. Contents concern what needs to be brought to registration, basic skills the child should have mastered before entering school, the need to familiarize the child with the school and the school grounds, and things parents should know about their…

A kindergarten screening instrument used by the Springfield, Ohio city schools is included in this document, along with related materials concerning test norms, composite class records, and information for parents (with suggested activities for promoting child development and school readiness at home). Also included is an outline of a rationale…

The purpose of this study was to obtain information on a variety of school skills that preschool and kindergarten teachers expect children to display in regular kindergarten classrooms. The Skill Expectation Survey for Kindergarten Readiness was administered to 21 preschool teachers and 28 kindergarten teachers from two school districts in Kansas.…

Examined the efficacy of the McCarthy Screening Test (MST) and Metropolitan Readiness Test (MRT) to predict academic readiness after kindergarten and achievement at the end of first grade. The MST significantly predicted children's scores of the MRT and SFAT. Additionally, the MRT was a significant predictor of the SFAT. (JAC)

Describes positive results in instruction and in pupil's school readiness achieved within the extended-day kindergarten program implemented in Worcester, Massachusetts, public schools in 1972. (GC)

An abbreviated scoring system for the Goodenough-Harris Draw-A-Man Test found that three items had the same overall potential for correctly identifying at-risk kindergarteners as more time-consuming scoring methods. (CL)

These four newsletter issues provide information on current research and practice to early childhood professionals teaching in the primary grades in Colorado, focusing on readiness of schools for children entering the public school system. The Winter issue focuses on standards of quality for primary programs, and includes discussion of…

In response to the first of the National Education Goals (1991), which reads, "all children in America will start school ready to learn," this paper addresses four interpretations of the term "readiness" and the methods that have been devised to assess children's learning at the outset of formal schooling. The idealist or nativist view claims that…