This report provides a portrait of children entering Head Start for the first time in fall 2009, as well as of their family backgrounds and the classrooms and programs that serve them. The report also offers comparisons across the past decade of the Head Start program to delineate trends and changes in the population served and the services…

A prekindergarten screening program using a team consisting of two kindergarten teachers, a school psychologist, a speech/language therapist, a nurse, and an occupational therapist/special education teacher for the identification of "high risk" children is described. (PHR)

This project makes training and technical help available to communities to screen preschool children, locate high-risk children, and direct families to existing services or develop local community services for handicapped children and their families. It provides participating families with information on childhood development and the need to…

The 1997 Utah Legislature mandated the development and administration of assessment of students' early reading and numeric skills so that these students' instructional needs might be better met. This document provides answers to several questions regarding Utah's pre-kindergarten and end-of-level kindergarten assessments. The questions include the…

Through the combined efforts of the Hawaii Department of Health's Family Health Services and Mental Health Division, developmental and socioemotional screening services are being offered in approximately 115 preschool and day-care centers. This paper provides a general overview of the program and describes its various service delivery models.…

Although several vision screening techniques are available for infants, none is routinely used. Visual deficits are often first detected through required preschool vision screenings, which vary in their comprehensiveness. No standardization for testing or administration exists. Some of the testing procedures used may have inappropriately high…

The Social Observation for Mainstreamed Environments (SOME) checklist evaluates handicapped preschool children's social skills and readiness for mainstreamed environments. Checklist items represent social behaviors important to successful preschool integration, such as initiating interactions appropriately, obeying class rules, and respecting…

This issue of the NCEDL Spotlight Series newsletter presents findings of a nationwide survey of state policies and definitions related to school readiness. Findings indicated that efforts to minimize the misuse of readiness assessment tools may have had some impact at the state level, with respondents showing an increased awareness of recommended…

This document presents the evaluation design and findings of the second year of operation of the Experimental Bicultural Early Childhood Program, an Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Title III project operating in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The major objectives of the program were: (1) to facilitate the development of school readiness…

This final report summarizes the activities and findings of a research project which developed a model program for preschoolers "at risk in language." A total of 22 children, including 17 children "at risk" and 5 peers, participated in the program; the children served by the project showed increased facility with language in…

Focusing on formal testing programs involving academic achievement, the assessment of student performance in 28 large city school districts is described. In addition to presenting how districts have designed testing programs to meet the variety in the students they serve, this report also discussed test management, work with test publishers, test…

The Head Start Measures Project was a 3-year study to develop a set of measures designed specifically for Head Start children. The measures are based on a path-referenced approach to assessment, in which children's performance is described in terms of their position along paths of development. A path is defined as a sequence of skills within a…

The fourth of eight related documents, this monograph describes the prekindergarten identification and readiness phase of the Reading Instruction and Pupil Personnel Services (RIPPS) program. The document describes the four major components of this phase: (1) a comprehensive registration, (2) parent information presentation, (3) health screening,…

This paper describes the development and use of the Casey-Monahan Screening Instrument, designed to assess kindergarten readiness. The instrument consisted of various tests and evaluation procedures chosen from previously published tests. The instrument was designed to measure ability in five areas: (1) motor integration and motor development, (2)…