Research Findings: Effects on children's school readiness were evaluated for 2 interventions focused on improving teacher-student interactions (coursework, coaching) implemented sequentially across 2 years. Teachers from public prekindergarten programs in 10 locations were assigned randomly to treatment or control conditions in each year.…

The aim of this paper is to address two research questions related to the policy goal of having all children ready to learn at kindergarten entry. First, to what extent are children's cognitive and achievement skills higher when they experience higher quality preschools? Second, are the effects of preschool center quality on these school readiness…

This article examines associations between observed quality in preschool center classrooms for approximately 6,250 three- to five-year-olds and their school readiness skills at kindergarten entry. Secondary analyses were conducted using data from four large-scale studies to estimate the effects of preschool center quality and interactions between…

This paper examines activity settings and daily classroom routines experienced by 3- and 4-year-old low-income children in public center-based preschool programs, private center-based programs, and family child care homes. Two daily routine profiles were identified using a time-sampling coding procedure: a High Free-Choice pattern in which…

With the rising number of Latino and dual language learner (DLL) children attending pre-k and the importance of assessing the quality of their experiences in those settings, this study examined the extent to which a commonly used assessment of teacher-child interactions, the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), demonstrated similar…

Child engagement in prekindergarten classrooms was examined using 2,751 children (mean age = 4.62) enrolled in public prekindergarten programs that were part of the Multi-State Study of Pre-Kindergarten and the State-Wide Early Education Programs Study. Latent class analysis was used to classify children into 4 profiles of classroom engagement:…

Research Findings: Relatively little is known about the pre-academic experiences of Latino/a children in family child care. In this work we tested the extent to which previously established relations among provider characteristics, scaffolding and responsive behaviors, total quality (Family Day Care Rating Scale), and children's engagement in…

This study examines early childhood educators' beliefs about "what" children need prior to before entering kindergarten. Focus group interviews were conducted with early childhood educators from three learning settings: public center-based programs, private center-based programs, and family child care centers. Qualitative methods were used to…

Using data from the National Early Head Start (EHS) Research and Evaluation Project (N = 1851), the current study examined relations among cumulative family and social risk, assessed during infancy and the preschool years, and children's prekindergarten achievement, self-regulatory skills, and problematic social behavior, testing if these…

This study examined development of academic, language, and social skills among 4-year-olds in publicly supported prekindergarten (pre-K) programs in relation to 3 methods of measuring pre-K quality, which are as follows: (a) adherence to 9 standards of quality related to program infrastructure and design, (b) observations of the overall quality of…

The aim of the study was to uncover early childhood educators' beliefs about how to best work with children getting ready for kindergarten. The study involved 11 focus groups with providers from three types of early education settings located in Los Angeles County: (1) public center-based programs, (2) private center-based programs, and (3) family…

We examined children's growth in school-related learning and social skills over the pre-Kindergarten (pre-K) year in state-funded programs designed to prepare children for kindergarten. We expected that children's gains in academic and social skills could be attributed to variations in the structural and classroom process dimensions of program…

Publicly funded prekindergartens are programs that most states use to promote school readiness, especially of 4-year-old children at risk for academic problems due to poverty. Despite large public expenditures, these programs have not been widely evaluated. We examined 240 randomly selected pre-kindergarten programs in six states with mature…

Research Findings: This study analyzed the school readiness beliefs of parents of 452 children from public pre-kindergarten and the relations of these beliefs to socioeconomic status and children's readiness skills. Parents conceived readiness largely in terms of the ability to name objects, letters, or numbers, but few included inferential…

In the past decade in the United States, pre-kindergarten programs for four year olds have expanded rapidly as a potentially powerful intervention intended to promote school readiness for children at-risk for future school failure. This paper describes in detail multi-dimensional profiles of observed quality across 692 classrooms in 11 states…