As a part of efforts to evaluate and monitor the increasing public investment in early childhood education, teachers are being asked to assess children's school readiness. In this study, preschool teachers and kindergarten teachers rated children's skills in three areas (kindergarten readiness, academic skills, and communication skills), and these…

Does persistent adversity over time have effects on children's behavior beyond the effects of intermittent or concurrent adversity? This study examined the relations between school behavior in 5th grade (mean age = 11 years 0 months) and indexes representing persistent poverty and contextual risk. The indexes described 2-year intervals of family…

The present concurrent study combined developmental and ecological considerations to examine the unique contribution of multiple preschool competencies to an indicator of early academic success. Participants included 195 Head Start children from 32 classrooms representative of a large, urban Head Start program. Dimensional (variable-centered)…

Dutch schools have to deal with policy programs that generally are aimed at the improvement of the cognitive and social functioning of 3 groups of disadvantaged students. These are (a) pupils with special educational needs, (b) pupils at risk, and (c) non-Dutch pupils. The Dutch Integrated School Policy Project examines the implementation and…

In this article, the authors use data from interviews and observations in four urban elementary schools -- two high-performing and two probation schools -- to examine how schools respond to high-stakes accountability policies. The authors show that school responses to high-stakes accountability depend on the schools' accountability status. In…

This article explores the impact of pre-school experience on young children's cognitive attainments at entry to primary school and analyses data collected as part of a wider longitudinal study, the Effective Provision of Pre-school Education (EPPE) project, which followed a large sample of young children attending 141 pre-school centres drawn from…

The Pathways to Prevention (PTP) initiative was designed to help selected Early Head Start (EHS) programs enhance their mental health services for infants and toddlers by learning to work with infant mental health consultants. PTP engaged the author to provide support to the infant mental health consultants through regular group consultation via…

This paper presents findings of an evaluation of a one-off, small scale, pilot project. Picking up where Sure Start, the government programme for families of newborns to threes, leaves off, "Families in Focus" works with children aged four to 16 on a disadvantaged council estate in London. Through this route, the programme also reaches…

Standardized testing has been implemented in most school districts as part of an effort to improve student achievement in mathematics, reading, science, and English. There have been heated debates as to the effects of these improvement efforts on student achievement. In studying these issues, it is important to examine longitudinal growth patterns…

This paper presents comments on Ceci and Papierno's article concerning advantaged and disadvantaged youth interventions. The author notes that while the article was more than welcome, the discussion was nevertheless still couched within a seriously culturally biased conceptual framework. Even though most psychologists accept this framework, it…

According to the Children's Defense Fund, 17.6% of American children live in poverty--about one of every six children. The numbers are rising, and, alarmingly, the number of children living in extreme poverty--families with incomes at or below 50% of the poverty line--is rising even more dramatically. They live in cities, towns and rural areas.…

Difficulties are outlined in how to consider whether boys and girls have distinctive approaches and needs in relation to spiritual development, especially the lack of any agreed definition of spiritual development and the nature of the research literature relating to gender. I explore this without presupposing, or excluding, any particular…

Eighty-two Head Start preschoolers were assessed with a peer rating measure of sociometric status, the Social Skills Rating System for Teachers (Gresham & Elliott, 1990), an Overt Aggression scale culled from items from the Aggressive Behavior subscale of the CBCL-TRF (Achenbach, 1997), and teacher ratings of relational aggression (Crick,…

This chapter is a draft of Chapter 7 of a planned book, "Preschool and Jobs: Human Development as Economic Development, and Vice Versa." This book analyzes early childhood programs' effects on regional economic development. Four early childhood programs are considered: (1) universally accessible preschool for four-year-olds of similar…

Under the No Child Left Behind Act, states have been required to set minimum proficiency standards that virtually all students must meet by 2014. Sanctions of increasing severity are to be applied to schools that fail to meet interim targets, known as Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). The authors examine the effect of this legislation using…