School Readiness

“All children are ready for the first grade.”

The first of SREB’s 12 Challenge to Lead Goals for Education deals with the first years of children’s lives. The experiences children have in the years before they start school have a profound effect on their future. SREB’s work in this area has focused primarily on what states can do to help make those early years as fruitful and positive as possible. To be prepared to succeed when they enter school, young children need to be healthy and well-fed and to have adequate shelter. They need to be in loving, supportive environments that provide them with the kinds of stimulation that all children need to develop the basic social and cognitive skills upon which success in school and in life are built.

SREB states have been national leaders in developing programs to help support preschool children. These include the most ambitious state-supported prekindergarten programs in the nation; parent support programs, such as Arkansas’ HIPPY (Home Instructional Program for Preschool Youngsters), that have become national models; and expanded health insurance coverage through state and federal initiatives.

Programs for preschool-age children are a wise investment, but they can achieve lasting benefits only if children enter schools that are prepared to build on the strengths children bring. Schools must be ready to do the best job possible for all children, regardless of whether the children are as ready as they should be. As part of the readiness goal, SREB monitors programs that help children and families make the transition to formal schooling as well as early intervention programs that help deal with individual children’s particular problems. Programs to improve reading instruction in early elementary school (listed under a separate heading) are a key part of this effort to make sure that improving school readiness applies as much to schools as to children.

For more information, e-mail Marilyn Thomas at marilyn.thomas@sreb.org. 

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