Questions are raised regarding the appropriateness of testing children for school readiness from both a conceptual standpoint and in terms of the negative reactions created in both children and parents. (JD)

The Miller Assessment for Preschoolers (MAP) and a number/counting test were given to 50 4- and 5-year-olds. Low performance on counting was related to significantly slower average response time, overshoot movement time, and reaction time, indicating perceptual-motor difficulty. Low MAP scores indicated difficulty processing visual spatial…

Argues that the teachability of language is constrained by what the learner is ready to acquire. The Teachability Hypothesis, based on this constraint, uses a speech processing approach to explain second language acquisition and contains important psycholinguistic information on which second language teaching methods could be based. (Author/CB)

Originally written near the beginning of the "new math" movement, this article reflects on the role of student discovery, intuition, mathematics as an analytic language, and the problem of student readiness. (MKR)

Reviews five major findings of language research about the effect of explicit instruction and relates them to second-language teaching and learning, covering such areas as the route of acquisition, psycholinguistic readiness, error correction, classroom versus nonclassroom learning, and access to comprehensible and meaningful input. (37…

Talking World is a speech and phonological-awareness training project for 3- to 5-year-old disadvantaged children. Participating children gained preparation for a structured school setting, but lack of consistent attendance made continuity of lessons difficult. (SK)

A major challenge facing the prekindergarten-12 education system in the United States is the fact that as the population changes, the particular needs of children change with it. One of the largest demographic shifts over the last ten years is the sharp increase in the number of students in public schools who speak English as their second language…

The turnaround recommendations and framework in "The Turnaround Challenge" grew out of both new research and synthesis of extensive existing research, as carried out by Mass Insight Education & Research Institute and its partners since September 2005. If the main report is the tip of the proverbial iceberg, this supplement represents…

This study frames the quality transition of Romanian business education embracing the role of students as clients and customers. In the first part of the study, responses from ninety-four fourth-year Romanian students provided a statistically significant gap between the level of importance of business competences and their level of preparation.…

This study used the Learning Potential Test to demonstrate the independence of learning potential from the characteristics of the family environment. The subjects were 36 white children age 46 to 75 months from low and middle socioeconomic level families. Demographic information was obtained by a questionnaire and the home environment quality was…

Many schools across the United States have created a new grade between kindergarten and first grade, called transition classes, to deal with low-achieving kindergarten and first-grade students. Upon completion of the transition class, students return to a regular class, where they usually remain a year behind their age cohorts. This paper presents…

Suggests that lower socioeconomic children may experience greater difficulty on oral language tasks than is the case on measures that emphasize receptive language. (RB)

This research examined stress in the kindergarten in the public school system of North Carolina. A questionnaire was designed to collect information from public school kindergarten teachers concerning seven stressors: (1) academic tasks that students were developmentally unable to handle; (2) death of a close family member or friend; (3) the move…

Explores the relationship between socioeconomic status and the school readiness of kindergarten children as measured by four frequently used readiness tests. Results indicate that low-socioeconomic status children, regardless of sex, score significantly less well than middle socioeconomic status children. (Author)