Preschool teachers face increasing pressure to ensure that "all" children acquire the competencies they need to start on the path to becoming successful readers in the early grades, including children who may enter preschool with exceptionally weak skills. This article describes efforts to provide individually tailored supports to relatively…

Emergent literacy skills are important for children's academic achievement. Many preschool children from low-socioeconomic backgrounds have limited access to experiences that allow them to acquire emergent literacy skills such as letter knowledge, concepts of print, and phonological awareness. This article describes purposeful and age-appropriate…

The original vision of Head Start called for a program that would "get kids ready so they would have a chance in school...a chance in life" (Sargent Shriver; quoted in Zigler and Valentine, 1997, p. 59). President George W. Bush's recent emphasis on literacy and school achievement in Head Start highlights the academic aspect of the Head…

This study examined the relationships between behavior problems, learning behaviors, and educational outcomes for at-risk preschool children. A sample of Head Start children (N = 196) was selected in the southeast United States. Behavior problems were assessed using the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (LeBuffe & Naglieri, 1999) and…