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School readiness assessment is a hot topic these days, in large part because of increased accountability pressures in both the public schools and early care and education settings. What exactly is meant by the phrase school readiness assessment, and what should early care and education teachers and administrators know about it?
This Research in Review article addresses several questions that Young Children readers may have about the topic. Additional questions are addressed in a longer, online version of this article (see box on p. 46).
Defining school readiness
School readiness involves more than just children. School readiness, in the broadest sense, is about children, families, early environments, schools, and communities (National Association of State Boards of Education 1991). Children are not innately ready or not ready for school. Their skills and development are strongly influenced by their families and through their interactions with other people and environments before coming to school. With 81 percent of U.S. children in nonparental care arrangements the year before kindergarten (West, Denton, & Germino-Hausken 2000), child care centers and family child care homes are important early environments that affect children's development and learning.
Schools are also an important piece of the readiness puzzle because different schools have different expectations about readiness. The same child, with the same strengths and needs, can be considered ready in one school and not ready in another school. It is a school's responsibility to educate all children who are old enough to legally attend school, regardless of their skills. The National Education Goals Panel (Shore 1998) lists characteristics of ready schools. Finally, communities are important because readiness for school success is a community responsibility, not just a responsibility for parents or preschool teachers. Communities, for example, should provide high-quality health care and support services for families of young children and work to ensure that all families with young children have access to high-quality care and education.
Most school readiness assessments focus on one part of the puzzle-the child. The National Education Goals Panel (NEGP 1997) identifies five domains of children's development and learning that are important to school success: physical wellbeing and motor development, social and emotional development, approaches toward learning, language development, and cognition and general knowledge (Kagan, Moore, & Bredekamp 1995;see NEGP 1997...