This report includes the latest information about how investment in early childhood education (ECE) correlates to school success and economic development. Members of state boards of education know that quality experiences have the largest impact on student outcomes. This report outlines quality in ECE, highlighting challenges that every state…

Iowa's Statewide Voluntary Preschool Program for Four-Year-Old Children (SWVPP) is an important part of the state's comprehensive early childhood effort, providing more opportunities for young children to access quality preschool and enter school ready to learn. The preschool programs are expected to serve four-year-old children with a range of…

Children demonstrate gaps in the math knowledge that they possess by the time they begin school, and these gaps have been found to predict long-term outcomes not only in math but also in reading. Consequently, it is important to identify what accounts for these early differences and how they can be addressed to ensure that all children enter…

Despite 50 years and more of "progressive education" in the United Kingdom, classed patterns of educational success and failure stubbornly prevail. So how, where and when does it all go wrong for the many children who continue to fail or underachieve? Drawing on the work of Basil Bernstein, this article centres processes within early…

This paper examines how early childhood policy initiatives in the United Kingdom and internationally currently reflect neoliberal concerns with school readiness in the development of human capital and what diverse theoretical perspectives might offer. The focus is a project involving a group of early childhood academics from one university and a…

The purpose of the study was to examine the relations among a single item school readiness screener, social/emotional ratings, and academic performance. A prior study found that single item kindergarten readiness ratings completed in the fall predicted end-of-year academic and behavior outcomes even after controlling for baseline scores. Here, we…

The current study examined the complex associations among marital status, home environments, and family strain (i.e. income, maternal depressive symptoms, social support, and parenting stress), as they predict preschool children's pre-academic and social skills at 36 and 54 months. Findings from the [National Institute of Child Health and Human…

Over the last decades, increasing attention has been paid in research and policies to the importance of children's early learning in preschool as a foundation for later life. This is considered especially beneficial for children living in disadvantaged societal conditions and those at risk of school failure. However, the perspectives of those most…

Wisconsin's gaps between Black and White student high school graduation rates (Richards, 2016) and Black and White fourth-grade math and reading scores (U.S. Department of Education, 2015) are the largest in the nation. These inequalities have led to criticisms of Wisconsin's schools and teachers as ineffective in bolstering the success of…

Persistently large achievement gaps between high-social-class and low-social-class children in America, and the disparities in opportunity that drive these achievement gaps, threaten the very notion of the American Dream. The lack of true equality of opportunity calls for much more comprehensive interventions to tackle those gaps. This report…

How do toddlers learn the names of geometric forms? Previous work suggests that preschoolers have fragmentary knowledge and that defining properties are not understood until well into elementary school. The current study investigated when children first begin to understand shape names and how they apply those labels to unusual instances. We tested…

The purpose of this analysis was to investigate the validity of skill groupings in an instructional technology learning system designed for use by children in early childhood education classrooms. A Principal Component Analysis was performed to measure the fit of 18 skill games to their 5 assigned groupings in the system, covering a range of…

Grounded in cutting-edge developmental research, this book examines what school readiness entails and how it can be improved. Compelling longitudinal findings are presented on the benefits of early intervention for preschoolers at risk due to poverty and other factors. The volume identifies the cognitive, language, behavioral, motor, and…

The transition to kindergarten is a critical milestone in children's lives, with implications for academic and future life success. The demographic family/parental variables of residence, social class, and race have been associated with children's adjustment to kindergarten. In particular, children growing up in families from urban, low-income…

This study examined whether children's observed individual engagement with teachers, peers, and tasks related to their school readiness after controlling for observed preschool classroom quality and children's baseline skills. The sample included 211 predominately low-income, racially/ethnically diverse 4-year-old children in 49 preschool…