Best Practices in Assessing Kindergarten Readiness

This artile addresses the numerous challenges that have developed in response to the first national education goal that states, “All children in American will start school ready to learn.” The definition and measurement of school readiness has been surrounded by controversy for decades. There is little consensus on how it should be defined and even greater uncertainty on how it should be measured. This paper addresses the issues of assessing readiness by reviewing the history, research, and methodological challenges relating to screening instruments for school readiness and then links these data to a best practices model of screening techniques.