The Spanish-language booklet lists ways that parents, employers, teachers, administrators, principals, and grandparents, neighbors, and concerned citizens can help America reach the National Educational Goals. First, the booklet summarizes the National Education Goals in the areas of school readiness; school completion; student achievement and…

Based upon the view that children learn better if their parents' and teachers' expectations are closely aligned, this study compared expectations of teachers and parents for school readiness skills and preparation required for entry into public school. A Likert rating scale was completed by 25 kindergarten/early childhood teachers and 104 parents…

Noting that one of the leading indicators of progress toward the goal of all children being ready for the first grade is the number of at-risk children with access to high-quality prekindergarten programs, this report presents information on the efforts of states in the southern United States to achieve that goal. The report notes that during the…

Noting that teaching reading is one of the Bush Administration's top domestic priorities, this pamphlet introduces the Ready to Read, Ready to Learn education initiative of First Lady Laura Bush. The goals of the initiative are to ensure that all young children are ready to read and learn when they enter their first classroom, and to ensure that…

Historically the field of early care and education has focused on one type of standardsprogram standards to define requirements for important features of the services children receive. Recently another type of standards has come to the forefront of early care and education policy and practiceearly learning standards that define expectations for…

A number of preschool and kindergarten assessment systems are being put into place across the nation, with a variety of purposes and collection methods. The "Assessing the State of State Assessments" symposium was convened to provide an opportunity for persons working most closely with state assessment systems to identify common…

Under the state's Quality Schools Initiative, each Alaska school is required to take a number of steps toward improving the quality of education. This brochure provides information to educators about the first requirement of the Quality Schools Initiative: completing the Alaska Developmental Profile. This profile is completed for each child…

At a large Midwestern university, the distance learning administration has recently found a need to develop a preassessment instrument for its distance learning students. The instrument would be made available to students to help them determine their readiness for the unique nature of distance learning. This study sought to determine whether the…

Raising the age of eligibility to enter kindergarten has not eliminated variations in children's readiness for school, and parents and teachers have used delayed entry and retention as strategies to accommodate these variations. Information from the 1993 and 1995 National Household Education Survey is used to describe the numbers and…

The intent of this study was to determine if attendance in a good quality prekindergarten program using developmentally appropriate activities had a positive effect on kindergarten mathematics readiness skills and achievement. Participating were 80 children, 4 to 6 years old, divided into two experimental and two control groups. Standardized test…

Although many studies show that children who have rich early childhood experiences are better prepared for academic learning in school, many kindergarten teachers report that a large, and growing, number of children are not ready to learn when they arrive for their first day of school. This booklet, directed to parents, provides information on the…

Kindergarten measures were significantly predictive of Anglo English speakers, somewhat less accurate for the Mexican American English-speaking group, and generally nonpredictive for Mexican American Spanish speakers. The tests were not language or culture specific. The importance of language as a factor in school screening is underscored. (Author)

Interviewed parents and staff of Stepping Stones, a project to transition severely disabled children from home-based intervention program to preschool, to identify concerns and information needs. Found that parents were unsure about educational objectives for non-disabled children at the preschool and were therefore uncertain about what to expect…

To better prepare students for kindergarten, the Lafayette County School District in Oxford, Mississippi, provided cost-effective professional development seminars to local day-care workers. Three-day seminars several times a summer for 3 years were offered to all day-care workers and preschool teachers in the county including Head Start staff,…

Evaluated effectiveness of abbreviated Printing Performance School Readiness Test in identifying at-risk or failure-prone children (N=171) at the start of prekindergarten by following subjects for three years. Found form errors in children's printing could be scored reliably and that they remained stable over time and were tied to children's…