This study examines whether associations between enrollment in public and non-public PreK and children's (N = 508; M[subscript age] = 5.60 years in fall of kindergarten) math and language and literacy outcomes were more likely to be sustained through the spring of kindergarten for unconstrained versus constrained skills. Associations between…

Despite strong evidence self-regulation skills are critical for school readiness, there remains a dearth of longitudinal studies that describe developmental trajectories of self-regulation, particularly among low-resource and underrepresented populations such as Spanish-English dual-language learners. The present study examined individual…

Multitiered systems of support hold promise for dual language learners when culturally and linguistically responsive practices guide instruction. We modeled growth on Spanish and English early literacy skills and examined the role of language exposure and use at the individual and classroom instruction level in a group of 313…

Spanish speakers in the United States are a steadily increasing population, up by 233% since 1980. Given the growing population of dual language learners (DLLs) and the large numbers of Spanish-speaking children enrolled in pre-kindergarten programs, addressing the educational needs of preschool-aged DLLs has become a national imperative.…

This study reports an independent investigation of the psychometric properties of Desired Results Developmental Profile (DRDP), a teacher-rated measure of school readiness for preschool-aged children. In a sample of 2,031 low-income, 3- to 5-year-old children attending Head Start, we tested three measurement models: a higher order one-factor…

The present study examined differences in school readiness skills in the fall of kindergarten between pre-K attendees and non-attenders (n = 2,581) among children in a large, diverse county. Also considered was the extent to which skills associated with pre-K enrollment varied as a function of children's background characteristics and features of…

This study investigated the influence of teaching letter names and sounds in isolation or in the context of storybook reading on preschool children's early literacy learning and engagement during instruction. Alphabet instruction incorporated paired associate learning of correspondences between letter names and sounds. In Decontextualized…

Using a nationally representative sample of 3- and 4-year-old Spanish-speaking dual language learners (DLLs) attending Head Start (N = 654), this study examined whether mean levels of and variability in peers' English receptive vocabulary skills were associated with DLLs' English and Spanish receptive vocabulary skills in the spring. In addition,…

The purposes of this study were to (a) examine the degree to which teachers used linguistically responsive practices to support the language and literacy development of Spanish-speaking Dual Language Learners (DLL) and (b) to investigate the associations between these practices and select teacher-level factors. The sample consisted of 72 preschool…