Getting Children Ready For School: A Primer on School Readiness
By Amber Minogue
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The issue of school readiness has captured the attention of state and federal
policymakers as states work to improve the quality of early care and education
programs and conduct evaluations of child outcomes. At the state level,
the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 has caused many states to focus their
attention on ways to meet stringent new performance requirements.
Lawmakers are making connections between advances in early learning programs for
children and using those advances to help meet testing standards in the K-12
system.
School readiness is a set of concerns addressed by communities, schools and
families to prepare children with the tools they need to be successful in
school. Early childhood leaders at the state and federal levels have come
to a consensus on the basic definition of school readiness that includes three
essential components: a school’s readiness for children; children’s readiness
for school; and the capacity of families and communities to provide
developmental opportunities for their young children. For example, a
school’s readiness for children might involve how well state kindergarten
programs align their curriculum with community prekindergarten programs and a
community’s capacity may be measured by the poverty level or unemployment
rates.
Five areas of child development contribute to a child’s readiness to learn in
the school environment:
- Physical well-being and motor development include such factors as
health status, physical abilities, and conditions before and after
birth.
- Social and emotional development refers to children’s ability to
interact with others (social) and children’s perceptions of themselves and
their ability to understand and interpret feelings (emotional).
- Approaches to learning looks at a child’s inclination to use
skills, knowledge and capacities.
- Language development includes verbal language-speaking and
listening skills and emerging literacy-including print, story sense and
writing process.
- Cognition and general knowledge require a child to display
knowledge about properties of particular objects, identify similarities and
differences, and make associations. This also includes knowledge of such
things as shapes, spatial relations and number concepts.
Using Indicators to Measure School Readiness
Policymakers are increasingly using results to focus programs and policies on
improving the conditions of children’s lives and are using indicators to help
assess the success of those policies. Results, also known as
outcomes or goals, are more general conditions of well-being for children,
families or communities. An indicator is a measure for which
data is available or can easily be collected. The data is used to help
quantify the achievement of results.
As policymakers begin to use indicators to determine the effectiveness of
state policies, they are choosing to look at indicators that are measurable and
will ultimately move the state closer to desired results. Effective use of
indicators may help communities and policymakers measure the progress of new
strategies and gauge improvements in existing efforts by using quantifiable
data. Indicators generally are not used to measure the success or failure
of individual programs. Doing so would place an unfair burden on programs
to accomplish broad population results, such as children entering school ready
to learn.
Consider “children re ady to learn” as an example of an outcome.
One indicator that might illustrate children’s readiness is the number of
children identified with disabilities by the time of entry into
kindergarten. Early detection of disabilities allows parents and educators
to work together to minimize struggles a child might otherwise experience
without intervention. Because the cognitive, physical and mental health
status of children affects children’s ability and readiness to learn, focusing
on these indicators can be part of a larger school readiness effort.
Several characteristics are important to make indicators relevant
to policymaking. First, indicators should be based on data that can easily
be tracked and measured. Second, it is important to make sure that the
data collection is closely connected to desired results that in turn, clearly
indicate improvements and/or breakdowns in policy strategy. Third,
the collected data should focus ideally on an area that can be influenced by
specific policy approaches. For example, research shows that maternal
education is a key factor to children’s success in school. That data,
while significant, may not lend itself to clear policy options.
More research is needed to isolate the effects of various
interventions. Some indicators have more significance for school
readiness than others. Unfortunately, without more study, it is difficult
to narrow the indicators to the few most significant. Once completed, new
research findings could provide valuable information to policymakers as they
make decisions about which strategy will yield the highest probability of
improving school readiness.
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Understanding the Terms
Result – A result or outcome is a desired condition of
well-being for children, adults, families or communities. Children
ready for school is an example of a desired result or outcome.
Indicator - An indicator is a measure for which data is
available or can easily be collected. Indicator data is used to help
quantify progress toward a result.
School Readiness – The
combination of the condition of communities; the condition of schools; and
the condition of children when they enter school, including their physical
well-being and motor development, social and emotional development,
approaches to learning, language development, and cognition and general
knowledge. |
How Legislators Can Use the Results and Indicators Framework
How Legislators Can Use the Results and Indicators Framework
When considering the use of results and indicators to help create and monitor
policy, legislators can do several things.
- Start with results. Stakeholders need to develop consensus
about the results they want to achieve for the state’s children and clearly
articulate those results as outcomes or goals. Be sure to remember all
three components of school readiness-ready schools, ready communities and
ready children.
- Look at all established systems connected to positive results for
children to determine what data the state already collects. Determine if
that data is also an indicator for school readiness. This data may come
from other state agencies such as health, for example, where the number of
low-birth weight babies born in a state are compiled.
- Look at existing policies aimed at improving the well-being of
children and whether they also will contribute to achieving school readiness
results.
- Develop a set of indicators that clearly measure a condition of
children’s lives, not just the effectiveness of a certain program, agency or
system. In the initial stages of development,
consider limiting the number of indicators. Additional indicators can be
added at a later date if necessary.
- Consider policy strategies the state can pursue that will improve
school readiness results. Some examples might include:
- “Ready Children” = Increasing the number of prenatal services available
to families.
- “Ready School” = Increasing the number of teachers with bachelor’s
degrees for state early education programs.
- “Ready Community” = Increasing the number of parental education classes
offered.
- Consider legislation that will implement policy strategies.
Once strategies are in place, it is important to track the indicators
to ensure that the strategies are achieving positive changes in the
condition of children’s lives.
Resources
National School Readiness Initiative
To assist states in their school readiness efforts, the David and Lucile
Packard Foundation, The Ford Foundation and The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
formed a funding partnership for 17 states to create sets of indicators.
The information states will gain from monitoring these indicators can help
lawmakers create new policies or refine existing policies and aid in improving
school readiness for children in their states.
The initiative includes Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado,
Connecticut, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire,
New Jersey, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin. The states
involved in this initiative are at varying levels of implementation. NCSL, as a
national partner in the indicators initiative, can provide technical assistance
and examples of state experiences with development of indicators.
Selected School Readiness Sources
Improving Children’s Lives: A Tool Kit for Positive Results - A
concise publication describing the use of results-based decision making and how
it can be useful in shaping policy to improve the lives of children and
families. Contact the NCSL Children and Families Program in the Denver
office to obtain a copy.
Getting Ready Web site - The gettingready.org Web site is
designed to share publications, meeting information and other information
important for the National School Readiness Initiative. The site is
maintained by Rhode Island Kids Count, a children’s policy advocacy organization
that also is the lead agency for the national initiative.
From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development
- A landmark publication produced by the National Research Council in
2000. The publication is the result a council effort to compile the
existing science of child development. The publication also makes
recommendations based on the conclusions drawn from analysis of the
research.
The National Education Goals Panel (NEGP) - The NEGP panel was created
in 1991 to monitor and report on the nation’s progress toward achieving each of
the nations’ education goals, including By the year 2000, all children in
America will start school ready to learn. The panel is no longer
active but for more information on the panel’s work please see http://www.negp.gov/.
1. Child Trends, School Readiness: Helping Communities Get children Ready
for School and Schools Ready for Children, (Washington D.C.: Child
Trends, 2001; http://12.109.133.224/Files/schoolreadiness.pdf).
2. Mark Friedman, From Outcomes to Budgets: An Approach to Outcome-Based
Budgeting for Family and Children's Services (Washington, D.C.:
Center for the Study of Social Policy, 1995), 10,
http://www.cssp.org/uploadFiles/From%20Outcomes%20to%20Budgets.pdf.
3. Ibid.
4. The Fiscal Policy Studies Institute, The Results and Performance
Accountability Implementation Guide (Santa Fe, N.M.: Fiscal Policy Studies
Institute, 2001; http://www.raguide.org).
5. Susan Robison, Improving Children’s Lives: A Tool Kit for Positive
Results, (Denver: CO, National Conference of State Legislatures,
2001).
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