Research Findings: Recent evidence suggests that children benefit from pre-K programs in terms of both academic and social skills and that this growth is predicted by the quality of the interactions teachers have with students. Prior cluster analysis revealed 5 distinct quality profiles of teacher-child interactions in pre-kindergarten based on…

Research Findings: This study analyzed the school readiness beliefs of parents of 452 children from public pre-kindergarten and the relations of these beliefs to socioeconomic status and children's readiness skills. Parents conceived readiness largely in terms of the ability to name objects, letters, or numbers, but few included inferential…

The current study examined the social and language development of 345 Spanish-speaking pre-kindergartners who attended pre-kindergarten programs that varied widely in how much Spanish was spoken in the classroom by the teacher. Previous studies on English language learners have focused on how the language of instruction impacts children's language…

This study describes the meaning of program quality for a representative group of parents of children enrolled in public prekindergarten programs. Educators often conceptualized quality in terms of structural or process indicators; parents most often cited teacher experience and relationship to children. Families, like educators, emphasized…

Examined changes in classroom membership for 1995-1996 as indicated by kindergarten teachers. Found that 26 percent of kindergarten classroom membership changed over the school year, with frequency increasing as schools were more urban, in higher poverty districts, or with higher student minority representation. Teachers in high-turnover…