School Readiness

Full text

School Readiness
Christopher P. Brown
IntroductIon
An increasing number of early childhood
(EC) stakeholders across the globe are focus-
ing on the policy problem of ensuring all
children enter school ready to succeed
(UNICEF, 2012). This issue emerged on their
policy agendas as a result of empirical studies
demonstrating that a large number of children
enter school lacking the academic and/or
social skills needed for success (e.g. Wildy &
Styles, 2008) and that there appears to be a
correlation between being ready at school
entry and later success in school and in life
(e.g. Matthews, Kizzie, Rowley & Cortina,
2010). These research studies have led many
EC stakeholders to frame their reforms that
address improving children’s school readi-
ness as both an educational and economic
issue (Landers, 2013). Moreover, policymak-
ers have tied their support for these initiatives
to improve children’s readiness for school to
their ability to improve students’ perfor-
mance on a range of academic and social
measures at particular points in their school-
ing (e.g. Jensen, Broström & Hansen, 2010).
While the theory of action (Argyris & Schon,
1974) that underlies this solution to the policy
problem of school readiness seems logical –
early intervention in children’s lives teaches
them a specific set of knowledge, skills, and
behaviours that leads to later academic and
economic success – it fails to take into account
the complexity of the construct itself as well
as the multiple factors that affect children’s
growth and learning across all of their develop-
mental domains during childhood and later life.
To address these issues in this chapter,
I begin by defining the construct of school
readiness. Next, I briefly outline the history
of how this issue became a policy problem
in the United States (US) while making con-
nections to other international contexts such
as Australia. Doing so illuminates the core
constructs and arguments put forward by
many stakeholders across the globe who advo-
cate for all children entering school ready to
learn. I then investigate what is known about
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the relationship between school readiness and
children’s performance in school. With these
empirical findings in mind, I then examine
how policymakers’ focus on standardization,
the investment argument, and publicly-funded
preschool programs has altered the school
readiness debate. I then raise questions about
possible effects of policies addressing the issue
of school readiness on children, their families,
policymakers, and education systems them-
selves. Lastly, I end this chapter by raising
questions about future directions of the debates
surrounding school readiness policies specifi-
cally and early childhood education in general.
defInIng School readIneSS
Policy debates over school readiness first
emerged in the US in the 1960s. At that time,
many within early education questioned
whether and/or when children were ready to
learn. Those debates have long been settled,
and it is now a given within the scientific and
policy communities that children are born
ready to learn (Kagan, 1999; May & Campbell,
1981). However, there is no consensus in the
US or globally on what it means for children to
be ready for school (Britto, 2012; Graue, 2006).
Ackerman and Barnett (2005) point out that to
improve all children’s readiness for school an
agreed upon understanding of what school
readiness entails must first be established.
For this chapter, I turn to the work of Sam
Meisels (1999) to identify the varying under-
standings of school readiness. According to
Meisels (1999), conceptions of school readi-
ness within the discourses of educational
reform typically centre around one of four
framings of this construct: the nativist, empiri-
cist, social constructionist, and interactionist
perspectives. How stakeholders frame this con-
struct informs the ways in which they under-
stand the process by which children are ready
for school, the problem of school readiness
itself, and the means through which govern-
ment should address this issue. For instance,
the idealist/nativist perspective frames this con-
struct of readiness as being ‘a within-the-child
phenomenon,’ which leaves little room for the
role of environment in explaining a child’s
readiness (Meisels, 1999, p. 50). Children are
ready for school when their ‘level of develop-
ment is ready’ (Kagan, 1990, p. 272). The fam-
ily, teacher and school system are absent in this
understanding of school readiness.
An empiricist conception of this construct
views readiness as ‘something that lies outside
the child’ (Meisels, 1999, p. 52), meaning fami-
lies, teachers, and their school programs prepare
unready children to be ‘successful in a school
context’ by providing them with the necessary
skills, knowledge, and experiences (Carlton &
Winsler, 1999, p. 338). Through the empiri-
cist lens, early education programs are framed
as an apparatus that provide children with the
skills, knowledge, and experiences needed to
be ready for elementary school. Many of the
current education reforms across the globe that
focus on ensuring young children are ready for
elementary school, such as preschool or prekin-
dergarten (Pre-K) in the US, reflect this under-
standing of school readiness (e.g. Allen, 2011;
US Department of Education & US Department
of Health & Human Services, 2011).
The social constructionist framework
‘looks to the setting for its definition of read-
iness’ (Meisels, 1999, p. 49). A child being
ready for school is dependent on the social
context in which s/he operates, and as such, a
child can be seen as ready in one family and/
or community and not another. For instance,
Graue’s (1993) examination of the practices
of kindergarten across three different com-
munities in the US led her to contend that
‘meanings of readiness were locally devel-
oped and used,’ and as a result of this, the
purpose of kindergarten was determined by
the local ‘actors’ within each social context
(p. 248). Thus, expanding that to a global per-
spective, being ready for school in one nation
may look very different in another nation.
Lastly, an interactionist perspective frames
readiness as a ‘bidirectional concept’ that is co-
constructed ‘from the child’s contributions to
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School ReadineSS 289
schooling and the school’s contribution to the
child’ (Meisels, 1999, p. 49). This lens views
school readiness as an interaction between
what teachers do at school with children and
the knowledge, skills, and experiences chil-
dren bring with them to the school context;
meaning school staff must also be ready for
the children that enter their programs (Kagan,
1990). Such a view frames school readi-
ness as being ‘complex, multidimensional,
and process oriented,’ which in turn means
a more detailed conception of this construct
(Graue, 2006, p. 51). Many EC advocates (e.g.
Educational Transitions and Change Research
Group, 2011), organizations (e.g. Professional
Association for Childcare and Early Years
(PACEY), 2013), and researchers (e.g. Shaul
& Schwartz, 2014) across the globe tend to
promote this view of school readiness.
While these four conceptions of readiness
reflect the educational and political debates
that have been occurring in the US and glob-
ally over the last several decades (e.g. OECD,
2015; Shepard & Smith, 1986; UNICEF,
2002), they by no means represent the totality
of understandings of this construct (e.g. Kim,
Lee, Suen, & Lee, 2003).
Furthermore, critical researchers within EC,
such as Bloch (1992) and Moss (2012), have
demonstrated that this or any construct within
EC should be questioned and examined to
understand its underlying conceptions of such
things as power or the framing of the child, fam-
ily, practitioner, and the systems of EC across the
globe. For instance, critical researchers’ work
has demonstrated how conceptions of readiness
can be used to exclude rather than include the
very children and families that policymakers
and early educators are trying to address in their
early education reforms (e.g. Kummen, 2011).
While these critiques, as well as the varied con-
ceptions of the construct of readiness, are inval-
uable for the EC community so that its members
can understand, address, and respect the vari-
ability that exists among children, their fami-
lies, and early education programs, Meisels’
(1999) heuristic device outlined in the above is
employed in this entry to examine how school
readiness, as a policy problem, is conceptual-
ized in nations like the US.
School readIneSS aS a
PolIcy Problem
Historically, the marker through which chil-
dren’s readiness for school is determined is
age (Gifford, 1992). For instance, this nativist
conception of school readiness results in most
public education systems, which in the US
are run at the state level of governance,
declaring children are ready for school when
they reach the age of 5 by a specific date. In
the US and across much of the globe, when a
child can enter formal schooling varies. In the
US, each state, and even within local school
districts, determines when children begin
kindergarten, meaning the date can range
from June to January (Workman, 2014).
A Problem for Some
School readiness did not become a policy prob-
lem until the 1960s in the US when the federal
government established Head Start through the
Economic Opportunity Act and the Elementary
and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which
was as a part of the Johnson Administration’s
‘War on Poverty’.Policymakers designed Head
Start to address the issue of poverty through a
two-generation approach that would remedy
‘the educational inequalities borne by impover-
ished children’ (Zigler, Marsland, & Lord,
2009, p. 23).1 Head Start was to do this by
readying young children who carried particular
risk markers for school by providing them with
learning experiences that would put them on a
trajectory for success.
This legislation identified the root cause
of academic failure, which leads to economic
failure, as the result of impoverished devel-
opment and learning experience in the child’s
home environment. To help stop poverty
from being passed on from one generation to
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the next, the government needed to intervene
and provide publicly funded early interven-
tion programs that would ready poor children
for school. Policymakers did this not only to
ensure that poor children were just as ready
as their more affluent peers when they started
elementary school, but it would also put chil-
dren on a trajectory where this school success
would help them rise out of poverty.
The establishment of Head Start is significant
because it put in place a policy discourse that
framed particular children ‘at risk’ for school
success, which reflects an empiricist concep-
tion of school readiness. Moreover, the solution
to ridding this ‘risk’ from these children’s lives
was to help them develop a specific set of skills
and knowledge so that they would be ready for
school. Thus, this ‘set’ of knowledge and skills
became the marker(s) that US and now interna-
tional policymakers and members of the early
childhood community did use and continue to
use to define particular populations of students
and their families, and this conception of school
readiness continues to pervade the politics and
policies of EC in the US (e.g. Neuman, 2009)
and internationally (Landers, 2013).
A Problem for All
While the establishment and funding of Head
Start continues to be a contentious political
issue in the US, the program was designed to
ready a particular and very limited population
of children for school. Not until the 1980s did
the readiness of all children for school become
a policy problem. In the US, the publication of
the National Commission on Excellence in
Education’s (NCEE) A Nation at Risk (1984)
questioned the academic readiness and abili-
ties of all school-age children. As such, the
federal government and the nation’s governors
began to pursue a range of educational reforms2
(e.g. National Governors’ Association, 1986)
that sought to improve the US public educa-
tion system by promoting a decentralized
system of education that emphasized the
development of educational goals that named
the content and skills that students are to learn
while assessing their performance in relation
to that content. These shifts in education
policy escalated the curricular expectations for
students in the early grades and framed school
readiness as something that children need to
possess when they enter elementary school
(e.g. Hatch & Freeman, 1988). This led to the
increased use of readiness tests for kindergar-
ten and first grade entry (Meisels, 1987;
Shepard & Smith, 1986).
In 1989, then President Bush and the state
governors put forward proposed legislation
titled America 2000, and while Congress did
not pass this policy agenda, it did establish six
goals for public education across the US. The
first goal stated that ‘by the year 2000, all chil-
dren in America will start school ready to learn’
(US Department of Education, 1991, p. 9). The
Clinton Administration, which followed the
Bush Administration, did get Congress to pass
Goals 2000 legislation and made this goal of
all children starting school ready law (National
Education Goals Panel, 1991).
This call by policymakers for all children
to start school ready caused many within the
field of EC (e.g. Meisels, 1992) to worry that
this goal would continue to promote inappro-
priate practices such as the use of assessments
to determine kindergarten entry (e.g. Gnezda
& Bolig, 1988). Not only did such gateway
exams contradict empirical studies that dem-
onstrate children are poor test-takers (e.g.
Gullo, 1994), but they also ‘excluded children
from participating in the school curriculum’
that they needed to learn to succeed in ele-
mentary school (Shepard, 1994, p. 207).
As part of the Goals 2000 legislation, the
National Education Goals Panel (1991, 1995)
was established. The National Education Goals
Panel (NEGP) defined school readiness as
encompassing five dimensions: (1) physical
well-being and motor development; (2) social
and emotional development; (3) approaches to
learning; (4) language development; and (5)
cognition and general knowledge. To ensure
all children were ready for school, the NEGP
offered three objectives for families and com-
munities: (1) all children will have access to
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School ReadineSS 291
high quality preschool programs; (2) every
parent will be a child’s first teacher; and (3) all
children will receive the health care, nutrition,
and physical activities that they need to arrive at
school healthy (NEGP, 1991, 1995). Combined,
these efforts reflect an interactionist rather than
nativist or empiricist conception of school read-
iness, and by doing so, it expanded the construct
of school readiness beyond the child.
The work of the NEGP also began to be felt
by nations beyond the US (Dockett & Perry,
2015). For instance, Australian researchers
began to take an interest in the age of children
at school entry in the 1990s (Gifford, 1992),
and even today, UNICEF (2012) uses similar
language as the NEGP when advocating for
providing opportunities to prepare children
across the world for school success.
A Shift Towards the
Standardized Child
The NEGP attempted to expand conceptions of
school readiness and advocate for a framing of
the process of readying children for school
through an interactionist framework. However,
its work, as well as the other policies that
emerged out of the Goals 2000 initiative, were
eventually overtaken by US policymakers and
others across the globe shifting their framing of
education reform towards a view of standard-
izing public education systems and holding
stakeholders at all levels of its implementation
accountable for improving students’ academic
achievement (Gillborn & Youdell, 2000). Doing
so appeared to move the conversation around
school readiness towards the ability of the
public education system to ensure/improve stu-
dents’ preparedness to perform on policymakers’
high-stakes exams, which reflects an empiricist
understanding of school readiness.
In the US, the most poignant example of
this shift was the implementation of the US
federal government’s No Child Left Behind
Act (NCLB). This policy made holding stu-
dents, schools, districts, and states account-
able for improving the academic performance
of all children a national issue (O’Day, 2002).
In nations such as Australia (Sumsion &
Wong, 2011) and New Zealand (Duhn, 2010),
policymakers adopted national curricula that
inform all stakeholders about what children
should be learning and doing each step of the
way in their early education systems. Such
policies have been shown to alter the expecta-
tions (e.g. Jones & Osgood, 2007) and prac-
tices (e.g. Booher-Jennings, 2005) of public
school teachers in varying countries around
the world (e.g. Jensen etal., 2010).
This focus on creating standardized edu-
cation systems that promote particular types
of students who are ready to perform aca-
demically and socially in nations such as
Australia advocate for a ‘technocratic “quick
fix” model of change’ (MacNaughton, 2007,
p. 193). Such systems, as Woods and Jeffrey
(1998) have found in the United Kingdom,
lead to an educational environment in which
students are ‘to learn a prescribed set of things
in order to be able to survive’ in school and in
the larger ‘competitive market’ (p. 548).
In the US, NCLB triggered a series of sys-
temic changes for educators prior to kinder-
garten entry at the national, state, and local
levels (e.g. Barrett, 2009). Nationally, the Bush
Administration implemented the Good Start,
Grow Smart (GSGS) initiative (Office of the
White House, 2002) shortly after the passage
of NCLB. Part of GSGS directed early child-
hood stakeholders at the state level to define and
align a set of pre- reading, language, and math-
ematics knowledge and skills with the content
and performance standards that define their
state’s kindergarten through grade 12 (K-12)
education system (Brown, 2007).3 Scott-Little,
Kagan and Frelow (2006) summarized the
effect of this reform initiative by stating, ‘As
states develop early learning standards they
are, in effect, defining the skills and knowledge
viewed as important for later success in school’
(p. 155). For Scott-Little and colleagues (2006),
this ‘de facto’ conceptualization of readiness that
emerged in this reform process ‘could translate
into a concept of readiness that focuses primarily
on the child and minimizes the importance of the
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The SAGe hAndbook of eArly Childhood PoliCy
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other elements of school readiness which play
an important role in the degree of success chil-
dren experience in school’ (pp. 167–168). With
early learning standards in place, states have also
begun to launch a series of kindergarten readi-
ness assessments (e.g. Kentucky’s Common
Kindergarten Entry Screener), which they use
to quantify children’s school readiness skills
(Daily, Burkhauser & Halle, 2010). Moreover,
the standardized image of what it means to be a
ready and successful student in school continues
with the implementation of such policy initiatives
in the US as Common Core (http://www.core-
standards.org) and the Obama Administration’s
Early Learning Challenge Grants under its Race
to the Top initiative.
the role of reSearch In feedIng
Into thIS emPIrIcISt concePtIon
of School readIneSS and the
StandardIzed chIld
While empirical research has played a signifi-
cant role in current policy discussions sur-
rounding school readiness and the construction
of the standardized child within education
policy, its history does not align directly with
the narrowing of policymakers’ policy agen-
das around the issue of student performance.
This is not to say that researchers were and/or
are ignoring policymakers’ concerns. Rather,
their work on the issue of school readiness
began with a different point of emphasis, a
nativist construction of this construct.
Redshirting and Retention
Much of the early empirical work around
school readiness in the US conducted prior to
the implementation of NCLB examined the
issues of kindergarten retention and academic
‘redshirting’, which is the process of purpo-
sively holding a child out of kindergarten even
though he or she has met the age requirement
for entry (Graue, Kroeger & Brown, 2002).
Researchers were interested in why teacher
and families might suggest redshirting and/or
retaining young children. For instance, Smith
and Shepard (1988) found in their work that
some families felt pressure from teachers to
hold their children out by being told by the
teachers ‘that the school would not be held
responsible for the subsequent success or fail-
ure of the pupils if the parents insisted on
promotion’ (p. 322). What is interesting about
this research is that teachers, families, and
other school personnel primarily located the
process of improving children’s school readi-
ness, be it academic or social, in increasing the
age of the child, which appears to make the
role of the teacher, parent, or school absent
from the process. Furthermore, they were
trying to improve children’s school readiness
without any pressure from policymakers.
When examining the issue of retention,
which means to repeat the same grade level,
some studies have shown an immediate increase
in retained students’ test scores (e.g. Alexander,
Entwisle & Dauber, 1993), but retention also
dramatically increases the likelihood that the
retained student will leave the education system
and continue to perform poorly on these stand-
ardized assessments (e.g. Allensworth, 2004;
Reynolds, 1992). For instance, Alexander,
Entwisle and Dauber (1993) found the stu-
dents’ test scores in their sample increased after
retention, but they also found that retaining stu-
dents significantly increased the likelihood that
they would not complete high school. While
these reforms measures produce an uneven set
of results, many educational researchers believe
that the immediate short-term gains in test
scores do not outweigh the long-lasting nega-
tive effects that result from this intervention
(e.g. Roderick & Nagaoka, 2005).
What Empirical Research
Has Found Regarding School
Readiness
Generally speaking, the academic and social
skills, knowledge, and dispositions children
enter public elementary school with, which in
the US is typically at age 5, are significant pre-
dictors of their later academic achievement
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School ReadineSS 293
(Duncan et al., 2007; Sabol & Pianta, 2012).
Children entering kindergarten at age 5 lagging
their peers in cognitive and social measures are
less likely to be successful in grade school,
more likely to drop out of high school, and are
projected to earn less as adults (Fryer & Levitt,
2004; Halle, Hair, Wandner & Chien, 2012).
Furthermore, once in kindergarten, in the US or
across the globe, children’s performance on
reading, mathematics, and social-emotional
measures provides insight into their later school
achievement and chances for success in adult
life (Claessens, Duncan & Engel, 2009; Rouse
& Fantuzzo, 2009). These gaps in children’s
academic and social achievement tend to
increase across their time in school (Alexander,
Entwisle & Olson, 2001; Feinstein, 2003).
Thus, no matter in which nation children live,
entering school ready appears to be a significant
issue for them and their larger communities.
Furthermore, teachers continue to indicate
that large numbers of children enter school
lacking the academic and/or social skills
needed for success (e.g. Rimm-Kaufman,
Pianta & Cox, 2000), and the implementation
of such high-stakes reforms as NCLB appears
to have narrowed their focus on what this
means for children to be ready for school to
those skills and knowledge found within these
policies (Brown & Lan, 2015). The signifi-
cance of both these findings is that children’s
level of readiness at school entry impacts on the
relationships they establish with their teach-
ers (Howes etal., 2008). Children who enter
school ready are more likely to develop posi-
tive and close relationships with their teachers,
which in turn are correlated with improved
academic and social-emotional outcomes and
long-term school adjustment (e.g. Palermo,
Hanish, Martin, Fabes & Reiser, 2007).
Scholars also contend that how families
frame their role in preparing their children for
school may impact the ways in which they
respond to as well as support their children’s
developmental needs, which can influence chil-
dren’s school readiness (e.g. Hindman, Miller,
Froyen & Skibbe, 2012). Researchers typi-
cally examine the issue of school readiness and
families by either trying to identify their beliefs
about school readiness (e.g. Diamond, Reagan
& Bandyk, 2000), the actions they take to pre-
pare their children for school (e.g. Downer &
Pianta, 2006), or possible differences that exist
across families who vary across such vari-
ables as socio- economic status (e.g. Winsler
et al., 2008) and/or cultural background (e.g.
Lahaie, 2008). Children who live in supportive
and stimulating home environments typically
enter school ready to perform (e.g. Bradley &
Corwyn, 2005), and thus, much of this research
tries to unpack how such issues as poverty
affect children’s readiness for school (e.g.
Duncan, Ziol-Guest & Kalil, 2010).
Generally speaking, these bodies of
research appear to demonstrate that families
frame what it means for children to be ready
for school through a range of academic skills
such as counting, reading, and writing (e.g.
Piotrkowski, Botsko & Matthews, 2000). This
is not to say that they do not take into consid-
eration their children’s health, social skills, or
emotional development (e.g. Diamond etal.,
2000). Rather, there appears to be a gap in
their understanding of the range of academic,
developmental, and social skills elementary
school teachers prioritize in their concep-
tions of school readiness (e.g. Wildenger &
McIntyre, 2011). Still, when examining the
interactions between teachers and families in
school, researchers continue to demonstrate
that such relationships have the potential to
shape children’s academic and social devel-
opment (Powell, Son, File & San Juan, 2010).
how StandardIzatIon, the focuS
on human caPItal, and the rISe
of PublIcly funded PreSchool
altered the School readIneSS
debate
When examining the evolution of the policy
problem of school readiness alongside the
empirical research that documents the sig-
nificance of this issue, it appears there is
good reason for policymakers to be focused
on the issue of how prepared children are for
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The SAGe hAndbook of eArly Childhood PoliCy
294
school success when they enter the kinder-
garten classroom.
However, up until the 1990s, few children
in the US outside of the federal government’s
Head Start program had access to the publicly
funded preschool programs that might pre-
pare them for school entry. In fact, only 10
states offered access to pre-kindergarten (Pre-
K) programs by 1980, 28 states by 1991, and
still now, only 42 of the 50 states offer some
form of Pre-K program (Barnett etal., 2016).
Globally, the proportion of children attend-
ing early education programs varies widely
across regions and nations (UNICEF, 2016).
Like Head Start, most of these state-based
Pre-K programs are intervention programs for
4-year-old children who policymakers deemed
‘at risk’ for school success – be it poverty,
being part of the foster care system, home-
less, being a non-native speaker of English,
etc. These programs almost exclusively take
on an empiricist conception of school readi-
ness in which early educators are to provide
these children with a particular set of experi-
ences that teach students their state’s early
learning standards so that they enter school
ready to succeed. Many states also have aca-
demic achievement measures which children
must take to measure whether they acquired
the knowledge and skills outlined in the early
learning standards (Daily etal., 2010).
From a policy perspective, the expansion
of Pre-K has not been the direct result of the
empirical literature documenting the impact
of children’s preparedness for school on later
academic and economic achievement. Rather,
policymakers across the globe have become
interested in such preschool programs as
Pre-K due to the work of researchers such
as James Heckman (Heckman, Moon, Pinto,
Savelyev & Yavitz, 2010) and others (e.g.
Schweinhart etal., 2005) who make the case
that offering preschool/Pre-K programs to
young children is a good investment of pub-
lic monies (e.g. UNICEF, 2016). This fram-
ing of EC as a ‘return on investment’ (e.g.
Bagriansky & Engle, 2009) contends that for
every dollar invested in particular types of
early childhood programs, a return of a partic-
ular amount of money in savings (depending
on the program) will be produced for taxpay-
ers. These researchers define savings as the
money saved from not having to spend addi-
tional money on future social and educational
services on the children who participated in
the program. This argument shifts the prem-
ise for funding EC programs slightly from the
Johnston Administration’s arguments for Head
Start. Rather than break the cycle of poverty
for particular children, funding EC programs
will save taxpayers money in the long run.
Moreover, it positions EC as an addend in
Heckman’s (Heckman, 2000) notion of human
capital theory whereby EC is not seen as a
right for the youngest citizens within a nation,
but rather, as an investment for taxpayers that
provide dividends in the form of more capable
and productive workforce members who will
not burden the nation’s social services and will
contribute to its tax payrolls.
Some have picked up this human capi-
tal argument as a vehicle to frame access to
high-quality early education as an equity issue
(Britto, 2012) – failing to provide access to
such programs perpetuates the status quo
(Ahmad & Hamm, 2013) and ignores empiri-
cal evidence that demonstrates the significance
of high-quality early learning experience for
children’s development (High, 2008).
Others have employed the investment argu-
ment to advocate for high-quality early learn-
ing experiences for young children so that
they are either ready to enter the workforce
or military and/or are prevented from mak-
ing choices that might cost society additional
money (see www.readynation.org; www.shep-
herding thenextgeneration.org; www.fight-
crime.org; www.missionreadiness.org; http://
www.championsforamericasfuture.org). For
instance, the US military’s program titled
‘Mission: Readiness’ contends that failing
to provide children with high-quality early
learning experiences has limited the poten-
tial of the pool of enlistees who can meet the
required criteria to enlist in the US military,
which jeopardizes the military readiness of the
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School ReadineSS 295
US and future national security (Christeson,
Bishop-Josef, Taggart & Beakey, 2013).
Quality Rating Systems
Because investing in early childhood educa-
tion so that children enter school ready to suc-
ceed is now the dominant narrative for why
governments should fund and/or expand such
programs, policymakers and others are focus-
ing on what types of experiences children are
having in these preschool programs. This
focus is tied to empirical researchers consist-
ently demonstrating that high-quality early
care and education relates to higher language,
academic, and social skills, and fewer behav-
iour problems (e.g. Burchinal, Kainz &Yaping,
2011). Yet, a substantial number of children
are attending EC programs in the US and in
other countries that are mediocre at best, even
among state-funded/supported Pre-K pro-
grams (Barnett et al., 2016). Moreover, chil-
dren addressing such factors in their life as
living in poverty are disproportionately
exposed to programs with lower quality
(Orkin, Yadete, & Woodhead, 2012). This
means that they often participate in EC pro-
grams with less-educated teachers who offer
low-quality interactions and learning experi-
ences as well as have large class sizes
(Burchinal & Cryer, 2003). One way policy-
makers and EC stakeholders have sought to
improve preschool quality is through the estab-
lishment of a Quality Rating Improvement
System (QRIS). In the US, these systems have
been developed at the state level and have
expanded rapidly with the support of the
Obama Administration’s Race to the Top Early
Learning Challenge Grant (RTT-ELC). Now,
almost every state in the US is developing or
implementing a QRIS (Tout et al., 2010).
Other nations, such as Australia, have created
national programs such as the National Quality
Framework (Department of Education,
Employment and Workplace Relations, 2011),
and organizations, such as UNICEF, are prior-
itizing issues of quality as they attempt to scale
up access to early education programs in such
nations as Ethiopia (American Institutes for
Research, 2016).
QRIS is meant to improve the quality of EC
programs by creating an accountability system
that scores EC programs on a range of quality
measures that are then converted into an over-
all quality program-level rating. This rating is
designed not only to inform families and the
community about the quality of specific EC
programs, but it also gives the programs them-
selves information relevant to improving their
quality in relation to the items scored on the
QRIS (Zellman & Fiene, 2012). These rating
systems vary from nation to nation and state
to state in the criteria they include, but some
of the most common elements are: licensing
compliance, learning environments, staff qual-
ifications, family involvement, and accredita-
tion (Tout etal., 2010). Additional criteria may
include such variables as the use of national
and/or research-based curricula, teacher:child
ratios, assessment measures of children’s vary-
ing developmental domains, health and safety
requirements, provisions for children with spe-
cial needs, and community involvement.
While conceptually QRIS appears to be
a logical policy response to improve the
quality of EC programs for children to start
school ready to succeed, empirical research
in the US has demonstrated that its impact
on children’s academic and social develop-
ment is mixed at best (e.g. Burchinal etal.,
2011). For instance, Sabol and Pianta (2015)
found that the apparent short-term benefits
in children’s understanding of basic literacy
concepts, such as alphabetic knowledge, that
appear to be the result of the implementation
of a QRIS system in the state of Virginia are
lost by the time children enter kindergarten.
In all, the policy problem of school readiness
across the globe appears to be dominated by
an empiricist conception of this construct. As
such, policymakers are focusing in on a very
limited understanding of what it means for
children to enter school ready to succeed. This
narrow viewpoint leads to a set of solutions
that are to provide specific sets of knowledge,
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The SAGe hAndbook of eArly Childhood PoliCy
296
skills, and experiences to young children; caus-
ing many who work with or conduct research
in EC to raise questions about this empiricist
understanding of school readiness.
concernS about the current
emPIrIcISt framIng of School
readIneSS
Both politically and empirically, there appears
to be no end in sight to the debate over what it
means for children to be ready for school
(Brown & Lan, 2015). As the world becomes
more global and as citizens across nation-states
compete with each other for limited natural
and economic resources, expectations for chil-
dren will more than likely continue to rise.
With each new type of education reform to
address this policy problem, the focus appears
to be on improving and/or increasing the aca-
demic achievement of children so that they
are all successful in school and the global
economy. Such an emphasis has systemic and
personal implications. Systemically, tying the
success of early education to improving chil-
dren’s readiness for school defines the value
of such programs through their ability to
improve students’ academic achievement at a
reasonable cost. Failure to improve children’s
readiness for school may lead to the elimina-
tion of EC programs or reduced political and/
or fiscal support. It also narrows policymak-
ers’ focus and understanding of the learning
and development of young children to a very
specific time in their schooling, which might
also eliminate their willingness to support
programs that serve children prior to or after
school entry. Furthermore, by framing and/
or viewing EC programs as a form of inocu-
lation against poor academic achievement
(Heckman, 2008), this policy solution ignores
the other factors that contribute to children’s
readiness for school, such as access to health
care and a consistent/reliable source of food
as well as such family issues as employment,
parental leave, and so on (Britto, 2012; High,
2008). Addressing such issues appears to
have as much impact on children’s success
in school as access to high-quality preschool.
On a personal level, this almost singular
focus by policymakers on academic success,
which is tied directly to economic success,
will continue to intensify the debate over what
it is children need to know and be able to do
when they enter the kindergarten classroom.
Doing so places much of the onus of being
ready for school on children (Brown, 2011).
For instance, Moss (2012) noted that this fram-
ing of EC as a vehicle that readies children for
school, or for the next transition within the
system, e.g. college readiness, creates a mono-
logic discourse in which ‘each successive stage
of the system is … to make clear to those in the
stage below them what they expect and need
from children when passed up to them’ (p. 14).
This discourse creates a policy environment
in which children take the blame if they are
deemed unready by the educational system.
Such a singular emphasis on each child to
demonstrate that s/he is ready for school also
ignores the call by professional organizations
and stakeholders around the world for school
readiness to be framed through an interaction-
ist understanding of this construct (e.g. PACEY,
2013). By doing so, there appears to be lit-
tle space for early educators within the public
schooling process that allows them to engage in
instructional practices that reflect what is known
about how young children develop and learn
(Bowman, Donovan & Burns, 2000; Rogoff,
2003). Whitebread and Bingham (2011), who
reviewed readiness policies in England, warned:
The idea that rushing young children into formal
learning of literacy, mathematics etc as young as
possible is misguided. This leads to a situation
where children’s basic emotional and cognitive
needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness,
and the opportunity to develop their metacognitive
and selfregulation skills, are not being met. (p. 4)
They and others within the field of early edu-
cation in the US (e.g. Brown & Lan, 2013) and
internationally (e.g. Sofou & Tsafos, 2010)
argue that this emphasis by policymakers and
school systems on academic skill development
are creating schools that are not ready to
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School ReadineSS 297
prepare the whole child for school success.
This empiricist focus on school readiness de-
emphasizes the significant aspects found
within an interactionist conception of this
construct – developing a positive interaction
between early educators, their programs, and
the children and the families they serve, which
in turn affects children’s readiness for school
(e.g. Peisner-Feinberg et al., 2001; Pianta,
Barnett, Burchinal & Thornburg, 2009).
Additionally, there is a worry (e.g. Hatch,
2002) that such reforms can limit the oppor-
tunity for teachers to provide children with
play-based activities that foster their plan-
ning, problem-solving, and goal-setting skills,
which have been correlated with later academic
achievement (e.g. Bodrova & Leong, 2007;
Brown, 2013). Lastly, this singular focus in the
US education system appears to project what
Brown and Lan (2015) term the standardized
White, middle-class conception of school read-
iness. This vision of school readiness fails to
take into account what Yosso (2005) termed the
‘cultural wealth’ of children and their families
so that it may be utilized as an ‘asset’ to them
in school. Such a prototype has the potential to
further disengage and/or disempower them and
their families as they progress through school.
future dIrectIonS In addreSSIng
the PolIcy Problem of School
readIneSS
When considering future directions in
addressing the policy problem of school
readiness, many (e.g. Demma, 2010) focus
on systemic policy issues that further entrench
an empiricist understanding of this construct.
Such policy suggestions include improving
the training of and/or offering professional
development for early educators; continuing
to improve the quality of EC by expanding
such things as QRIS systems; aligning and
integrating funding across EC systems; estab-
lishing professional standards as well as
aligning academic and skills standards across
EC and elementary education systems;
providing parental support in and outside EC;
and implementing a range of reforms that can
develop safe and supportive communities.
The goal of these policies appears to be fos-
tering a robust and comprehensive system of
EC that provides children with learning expe-
riences from birth, which will put them on a
trajectory for school and eventually economic
success (Britto, 2012; Landers, 2013).
While it is difficult to argue against such logic,
I, and others (e.g. Moss, 2012), contend that the
linear nature of the current policy framing of the
issue of school readiness specifically and EC in
general needs to be rethought. Children are not
simply investments that need to be developed
through intervention programs. They are human
beings who act upon the world around them in
significant ways. Still, for an interactionist con-
ception of readiness to emerge, which captures
the bi-directional nature of this construct, it not
only requires a better understanding of the con-
struct itself, it also necessitates incorporating
the complicated educational and familial expe-
riences of children locally as well as globally.
Children’s experiences prior to school vary sig-
nificantly based on where they live and whom
they live with (UNICEF, 2016). While little is
known about these experiences for children in
and out of school occurring in local and global
contexts, even less is known about children
living in low-income nations (see Woodhead,
Rossiter, Dawes & Pankhurst, Chapter 13 in
this Handbook), making it difficult to under-
stand what they and their families might need
to help them live the lives they wish to lead
(UNESCO, 2007). Thus, there is an empirical
need to better understand children, families,
and schooling across a range of communities
and nations as well as what it means for these
communities to be successful in and out of
school. Moreover, there is a need for examin-
ing how these communities think about school-
ing in general and school readiness specifically.
As I note in the above, school readiness is
being framed in a very narrow manner by pol-
icymakers and many members of the EC com-
munity. Thus, for a robust vision of school
readiness to emerge, all EC stakeholders need
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The SAGe hAndbook of eArly Childhood PoliCy
298
to expand their conception of this construct
so that children, families, and communities
can work together to develop an understand-
ing of school readiness that moves away from
searching for deficits and allows children and
their families to become the productive mem-
bers of the community that they want to be.
Such a policy goal may never be achieved, but
as EC programs continue to expand across the
globe, how they define children and their fam-
ilies must be examined, and what it is they are
asking them to do and to become should be
questioned so that a more interactional pro-
cess of EC might emerge.
Notes
1 Currently, this population of students includes
those whose families are economically disadvan-
taged or have limited English-speaking skills and
children with special needs.
2 The governor’s initiatives traded a decrease in
state policymakers’ governance over school dis-
tricts and other academic issues for an increase
in the role of academic accountability in ensuring
improved student performance (Elmore, 2003).
3 In the US, children typically enter kindergarten at
age 5 and graduate from high school 13 years
later upon completing the 12th grade.
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