This report summarizes findings from the first year of an implementation study of the Early Childhood Cluster Initiative (ECCI). ECCI is a prekindergarten program in ten elementary schools and a community child care center in Palm Beach County, based on the design of the High/Scope Perry Preschool model. The initiative is characterized by low…

Even Start is a national program of early childhood and adult education to improve family literacy. This document is a series of four appendices which accompany the National Evaluation of the Even Start Family Literacy Program, a 4-year effort to assess projects, participants, and effects of Even Start. Appendix A provides in-depth description of…

The five chapters in this handbook, intended for parents of children entering kindergarten for the first time, offer suggestions about how parents can make starting kindergarten a successful and happy event for their child, and how parents can help their child get ready for school. The first chapter contains sections that describe when learning…

The purpose of this research study was to build and pilot a psychometric instrument, the Primary Childhood School Success Scale (PCSSS), to identify behaviors needed for children to be successful in first grade. Fifty-two teacher responses were collected. The instrument had a reliability coefficient (Alpha) of 0.95, a mean of 13.26, and a variance…

Ohio's mission in the 1990s is to prepare youth and adults to make informed choices and to enter, compete, and advance successfully in the changing work world. One way to measure Ohio's progress is to examine the Ohio vocational system and its direct relationship to the National Education Goals presented in America 2000. Goal 1 is readiness for…

A program to prepare refugee adolescents for secondary school experiences in the United States is described. The program, conducted in overseas refugee camps, began in 1985 as a complement to adult transitional programs. The daily program is designed to simulate the schedule and classroom procedures of a typical U.S. secondary school. Classes…

Act 619 of the 1984 Louisiana legislative session initiated the State-Funded Program for High-Risk Four-Year-Olds, which is intended to improve the school readiness of preschool students. This document is the program evaluation report for 1990 and 1991. Part 1 of the report is a comprehensive program description which provides information on: (1)…

Test scores on the Test of Basic Concepts, a school readiness test, were compared with actual performance in school for 186 low-scoring and 133 high-scoring groups of first graders from Spain at the beginning of the school year to explore the issues of competence testing and prediction of performance. The measure of school performance was derived…

This publication assesses the status of public elementary-secondary education in South Dakota and describes the state's progress toward meeting the six National Education Goals. A notable achievement is the Families First program, which is a broad-based initiative that empowers communities to identify and meet local human service needs and to…

This study examined the factors contributing to the early school adjustment of children at risk of school failure from preschool enrollment to fourth grade. A longitudinal model that used data on 1,255 low-income, minority children was tested in an effort to bring about an improved understanding of the factors that influence a wide range of early…

Intended as an aid to parents concerned with their children's educational progress, this guidebook provides information about schools and subject matter, offers advice on numerous topics related to education from birth through the twelfth grade, and suggests activities parents can implement at home to assess achievement and improve school…

Many professionals are convinced that more testing, tracking, and retention are taking place in the early school years than ever before. They also believe that developmentally inappropriate modifications to curricula are being implemented. As a result of inappropriate use of standardized tests, disproportionate numbers of poor and minority…

This monograph presents information to help educators consider how to determine the best age for each child to begin his or her formal schooling. Trends in state requirements for school entrance age are described, and research in areas such as mental age, reading readiness, child development, screening instruments, and experimental preschool…

Results from this two-year study of seven kindergarten curricula in 1973-74 support the hypothesis that structured programs produce greater cognitive gains for disadvantaged children. The study also suggests that a structured program may be more beneficial for high socioeconomic children. The six curricula described and evaluated are: Lippincott's…

This report describes an external evaluation study of a project designed to develop, over a 5-year period, a model bilingual program from nursery school through grade 6. Innovative and tested instructional bilingual-bicultural components (language, perceptual, health, motor and cognitive) are being implemented in an attempt to reach children with…