Background/Context: Young children's engagement with mathematics is occurring in a context in which school transition and readiness concerns that invoke increased institutional rules and disciplinary practices involving power dynamics are coming into play. These trends made us curious to undertake an in-depth investigation of the different ways…

States have invested heavily in improving early childhood education in hopes of improving student reading and math skills before they enter kindergarten. However, there is limited national data from later than 2010 on children's skills in these areas at kindergarten entry, so it is difficult for educators and policy makers to ascertain whether…

Ready for Kindergarten! Survey (R4K!S) is a readiness assessment of children entering kindergarten about students' knowledge and skills within the first six to ten weeks of school. There are many interpretations of what constitutes "readiness." Vermont's concept of children's readiness is multidimensional; it includes social and…

Research Findings: This cross-sectional study examined the class- and child-level associations of social-emotional competence with behavioral and academic adjustment among Chinese kindergarten children and tested teacher collectivistic socialization goals as a moderator. Participants were 523 kindergarten children and their mothers and class…

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to continue the efforts of other researchers in determining whether enrollment in a Pre-K classroom had any impact on students' literacy and math achievement scores in kindergarten. The researcher conducted a two-way repeated measure ANOVA model for the study. The study sample included 6 teachers and 76…

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the proportion of Americans living in moderate- and high-poverty neighborhoods increased. This trend was most pronounced among families with children. Numerous studies have linked higher rates of neighborhood poverty with less favorable outcomes, including low "school readiness," defined…

Research Findings: Universal screening practices that utilize reliable and valid screening measures are vital for identifying social-emotional and behavioral (SEB) concerns for students at-risk for future behavioral and academic difficulties. Screening procedures implemented at the start of kindergarten can result in early identification and…

This study gathered information from practitioners on their perspectives of experiences implementing the North Carolina Kindergarten Entry Assessment (NC KEA). Initially, practitioners were invited to complete an online survey asking them to rate or provide information about several aspects related to implementing the assessment process. In total,…

This report provides an overview of kindergarten readiness of six Baltimore City Public Schools (City Schools) kindergarten cohorts from the 2016-17 to the 2021-22 school year. This report is accompanied by the Annual Digest of City Schools Kindergarten Statistics, 2022 Edition (Baltimore Education Research Consortium [BERC], 2022), which provides…

Objective: This study aimed to examine the effects of maternal demographics, interaction quality, and children's gender on school readiness using different informants. Method: Participants recruited for this study included 25 kindergarten teachers, 271 mothers, and their kindergarten children (169 girls and 102 boys with a mean age of 4.28 years).…

Ready for Kindergarten! Survey (R4K!S) is a readiness assessment of children entering kindergarten about students' knowledge and skills within the first six to ten weeks of school. There are many interpretations of what constitutes "readiness." Vermont's concept of children's readiness is multidimensional; it includes social and…

Research Findings: The present study examined the transition practices reported by 59 pre-kindergarten (pre-k) and 186 kindergarten teachers in the rural Southeastern United States, and asked if transition practices related to skills at the beginning and end of kindergarten for 387 children. Analyses indicated kindergarten teachers offered more…

Research Findings In this study, we examined states' kindergarten entry assessment (KEA) policies between 2011 and 2018 and the possible impact federal funding policies may have had in their implementation. Between 2011 and 2018, 31 states received federal Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge awards and/or Enhanced Assessment Grants to support…

Two consequentially related education policy topics in the United States are kindergarten entry assessments (KEAs) and the growing number of students who are "English learners" (ELs). In this study, I compared the content of, and home language use policies for six state KEAs, all of which were comprised of items from the GOLD®…

Children's transition to school has been widely investigated, but most studies do not clearly define its starting point. By drawing on the cultural-historical concept of the social situation of development, and selecting 'role adjustment' as the unit of analysis, this paper seeks to clearly define the starting point of children's transition to…