This article identifies similarities and differences between Head Start parents of European American and Puerto Rican backgrounds regarding their socialization goals and expectations concerning the early educational experiences of their pre-school children. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 60 parents (30 European American and 30…

There is a highly compelling case for using technology on a large scale to increase access to and improve America's adult education and workforce skills enterprise. By the reckoning of the National Commission on Adult Literacy and others, the nation must reach many more millions of adults with effective college- and job-readiness skills programs…

Early reading instruction is important for all children, but especially for the disadvantaged, because the decision not to expose them to reading at an early age may result in an unrecoverable loss of intellectual potential. Reading readiness as an approach may exile children from literacy permanently because it is an abstract and alien process…

A study was undertaken to create and validate a diagnostic, task-based Informal Reading Readiness Inventory (IRRI). IRRI subtests were created to reflect four areas found to be important in reading readiness: awareness of self and media, language experience, reasoning, and phonics. Prereading curriculum components formed the basis for test item…

Preschool children's knowledge of printed words and letters was studied longitudinally, in order to achieve a definition and an ordering of reading readiness activities. Middle-class children were tested to determine what they knew about print, they were given word learning and word recognition tasks, and their parents returned questionnaires…

Many young children are being placed in a formal reading program before they are cognitively ready. Jean Piaget's developmental theory challenges educators to begin viewing learning and cognitive development from the child's point of view. Interpreters of Piaget's theory have addressed themselves to the teaching of math and science concepts, but…

Evaluation in reading must be a continuous process. The assessment of readiness, progress, and mastery in the development of skills, concepts, and behaviors must be an ongoing process if the best decisions are to be made for each learner. The articles included in this yearbook offer a variety of assessment techniques, using both objective and…

This study compared actual and recommended practices in reading readiness programs in kindergartens and first grades of New York State public schools as reported by classroom teachers and as advocated by chairmen of departments of early childhood and elementary education in the 54 teacher-training institutions in New York State offering…

This study investigated how self-regulation contributes to the development of reading competence in an at-risk sample of 157 children born to adolescent mothers. It was hypothesized that reading readiness at age 5 would shape self-regulation at age 10, which in turn would influence reading competence at age 14. Based on structural equation…

A study was undertaken to identify the factor structure of a battery of readiness measures and to demonstrate the concurrent and predictive validity of one instrument in that battery--the Pre-Reading Screening Procedures (PSP). Concurrent validity was determined by examining the correlation of the PSP with the Metropolitan Readiness Test (MRT),…

The extent to which individual differences in pictograph recall performance are related to reading readiness and other aspects of language and cognitive development is examined in this paper. In each of three studies kindergarten children were taught names and toy enactions for approximately 30 pictographs. The kindergarteners were then…

A battery of four reading readiness assessment tasks was administered to 267 first grade students to determine if the tasks predicted reading achievement as well as the Metropolitan Readiness Test (MRT). The four tasks, which were the best predictors in a previous study of seven readiness tasks, were the aural word boundaries task, the…

This review of the literature on kindergarten assessment and its relationship to primary reading achievement is divided into the the following sections: (1) studies which support early assessment; (2) studies which suggest the use of a battery over a single readiness test; (3) studies which utilize assessment data for treatment purposes; (4)…

The paper describes the beginnings of a total developmental language learning system for mainstreamed visually impaired children in Israel. The readiness program is divided into five sections: auditory perception and discrimination, tactile perception and discrimination and fine motor coordination, gross motor coordination, body image awareness,…