Recognizing that children who experience continuity as they enter formal education are more likely to sustain their earlier gains than children who do not experience continuity, this document provides guidelines for preschool, Head Start, and elementary teachers and administrators on transition procedures. An executive summary begins the document.…

The practice of delaying students' entrance into kindergarten raises several questions. This literature review asks: (1) How does the entrance age of kindergarten children affect academic achievement?; (2) Do age-eligible older students perform better academically than younger students?; (3) Do year-older or "red-shirted" students have…

Many schools across the United States have created a new grade between kindergarten and first grade, called transition classes, to deal with low-achieving kindergarten and first-grade students. Upon completion of the transition class, students return to a regular class, where they usually remain a year behind their age cohorts. This paper presents…

Discusses a study designed to examine the effect of translating the Metropolitan Readiness Test (MRT) for Spanish speaking school entrants, to determine whether administering the MRT in Spanish makes a significant difference on the scores of Spanish-speaking students, and whether these differences obtain for students in bilingual and all-English…

Suggests that lower socioeconomic children may experience greater difficulty on oral language tasks than is the case on measures that emphasize receptive language. (RB)

The Centennial School District in Warminster, Pennsylvania, implemented its Two-Year Developmental Kindergarten Program in order to provide education for children identified as "developmentally not ready" for traditional school placement. This document describes the kindergarten program and the process of identifying children for…

This paper describes the nature of stimulus and response generalization and identifies a number of tasks related to generalization that are commonly taught in early childhood programs. Substantial research has demonstrated that stimulus generalization does not occur automatically and it can often be achieved only as a result of special programing.…

The six sections of this guide offer information to teachers about the Gesell Screening and Developmental Placement Program for children entering kindergarten at Lincoln School, Toppenish, Washington. After a brief description of the Gesell program, Section I outlines aspects of planning the screening program, specifically discussing the…

Readiness skills of 1,261 kindergarten students were assessed with the use of the Kindergarten Instructional Design System (KIDS). The profile provides assessment in five areas: Motor, Visual, Auditory, Language, and Conceptual. Two statistical techniques were utilized to examine the underlying structure of the measure: factor analysis and…

The Printing Performance School Readiness Test is an empirically derived instrument designed to aid in the early identification of preschool children who are at risk for school failure. The test is based on the outcome of a research program dealing with various aspects of children's printing that involved over 400 normal, non-repeating, native…

Explores the relationship between socioeconomic status and the school readiness of kindergarten children as measured by four frequently used readiness tests. Results indicate that low-socioeconomic status children, regardless of sex, score significantly less well than middle socioeconomic status children. (Author)

Concern for an apparent drop in liking for school by fourth grade students led to the study reported here. It was felt that less adequately prepared students would like school less than their counterparts. Moreover, three self-concept scales were thought to be connected to the observed decline. Four instruments were administered to fourth graders…

This paper presents a method of designing and implementing a kindergarten screening procedure utilizing principles of systems intervention, needs analysis, and criterion referenced testing. Emphasis is placed on involvement of all elements of the educational system and on careful delineation of the role of each. Teachers are actively involved in…

The ages at entrance to school of a group of learning disabled students and a group of systematically selected students were compared. The learning disabled group showed a moderate tendency to be younger than their peers when starting school, indicating their risk of being identified as learning disabled. (Author/BS)

Investigation into the most effective use of a kindergarten screening battery to predict second-grade reading and mathematics achievement found that a combination of 10 readiness subtests resulted in the same degree of accuracy as that obtained using the entire battery. However, neither version was accurate enough to be useful. (Author/CB)