Readiness: Children and Schools

Concern for the readiness of America's children to profit from school experience was expressed by the President of the United States and the National Governors' Association at their summit meeting in February, 1990. The first of six educational goals outlined at the meeting was that "all children will start school ready to learn" by the year 2000. Three objectives emerged from discussion of ways to achieve this goal. Communities and schools must: 

• provide disadvantaged and disabled children with access to high quality and developmentally appropriate preschool programs designed to help prepare them for school. 
• recognize that parents are children's first teachers and encourage them to spend time daily to help their preschool children learn; provide parents with training and support. 
• enhance prenatal health systems to reduce the number of low birthweight babies; ensure that children receive the nutrition and health care they need to arrive at school with healthy minds and bodies. 

The Concept of Readiness

Consideration of the readiness goal and the more precise objectives raises questions about the concept of readiness and its meaning to policymakers and educators. This concept has been debated for more than a century (Kagan, 1990). The main issue debated is the extent to which development and learning are determined by the biological processes involved in growth versus the experiences children have with parents, peers, and their environments. Those who emphasize internal developmental processes believe that the passage of time during which growth occurs renders the child more or less able to benefit from formal instruction. Those who emphasize experience take the position that virtually all human beings are born with a powerful built-in disposition to learn and that inherent growth processes and experience both contribute to children's learning. 

The quantity and rate of learning in the first few years of life are nothing short of spectacular. The fact that by three or four years of age, most children can understand and use the language of those around them is just one example of learning that takes place long before children begin school. 

However, what children learn, how they learn, and how much they learn depend on many factors. Among the most important factors are the child's physical well-being, and his emotional and cognitive relationships with those who care for him. The school readiness goal reflects two concerns about the education of young children. The first is that increasing numbers of young children live in poverty, in single-parent households, have limited proficiency in English, are affected by the drug abuse of their parents, have poor nutrition, and receive inadequate health care. 

The second area of concern involves such matters as the high rates of retention in kindergarten and the primary grades, delayed school entry in some districts, segregated transition classes in others, and the increasing use of standardized tests to determine children's readiness to enter school. Standardized tests used to deny children entrance to school or place them in special classes are inappropriate for children younger than six. These trends are due largely to the fact that an academic curriculum and direct instruction teaching practices that are appropriate for the upper grades have gradually been moved down into the kindergarten and first grade.