Working Toward Goal One: Who Should Be Ready for What?

The first goal of Goals 2000: Educate America Act is that by the year 2000, all children will begin school ready to learn. We who have struggled for decades to focus the nation's attention on the lifelong importance of early experiences rejoice that this concept now is on national education agendas.

However, we are alarmed at the possible unintended consequences of the concept of children's "readiness." The long and painful history of our public education policy has excluded from school children not considered "ready," whose bodily or mental conditions rendered attendance "inadvisable," or whose characteristics required an "undue portion of the teachers time." Labels about a child's development have resulted in exclusion or segregation from children whose development or performance is "better." Exclusion or segregation has committed children to inferior services based on discrimination and lifelong predetermined expectations about potential and abilities.

This historic perspective is necessary as an underpinning and lesson for future improvements in U.S. education policy. If assessing children for "readiness to learn" becomes an accepted policy, schools may exclude or segregate large groups of children because their performance does not "fit" the "norm" expectations of the school--expectations that foster homogeneity, not diversity.

Indeed, in some districts, the notion of "readiness" is being used to deny kindergarten entry to the children who need it most. Although many national education, groups have condemned the practice, some reports estimate that up to half age-eligible children are currently denied access to kindergarten because they are unready or "immature," yet for many of these young children, public school kindergarten is the first pre-school opportunity they have for early educational experiences.

A readiness concept endangers our appreciation of diversity in children's abilities, culture, language, or learning styles. It presents an all-too-familiar paradigm of measuring detrimental effects of environment versus preventing the effects by addressing their causes.

Worrisome Rhetoric

The term "ready" implies a standard--a standard for which one is or is not ready. Goal One refers to readiness to learn. What child is not ready to learn? All young children are ready to learn the developmental and functional tasks appropriate to their stages of development. We need not measure who is ready to learn because all young children are ready.

The "ready" versus "unready" implication of the rhetoric is precisely what concerns advocates for children who represent diverse needs. Learning This should concern all education professionals. If a child is determined to be not ready to learn according to some particular standard, what happens to that child?

Many early education experts and national organizations believe that only one standard or criterion should be required for entry into kindergarten or school. The criterion is age. However, if schools are encouraged to adopt a construct that some children are ready to learn and others are not, and do, in fact, measure their readiness, then those determined to be unready, according to recent history and current practice, are put in educational jeopardy. They are in danger of being excluded or segregated from their peers. In many cases, this segregation can have lasting deleterious effects on their education.

Alternative Wording

Since all children are ready to learn, but some children's well-being or developmental status has been compromised, those compromising factors or events need to be the focus of Goal One.

The most prevalent ecological factors affecting children's well-being are not a mystery. They are poverty, violence, insufficient prenatal care, substance abuse, family disorganization, lack of parental education, homelessness, teen parenthood, inadequate immunization and health care, poor nutrition, and lack of adequate early intervention and educational experiences.

Numerous national reports state that these social factors are known to jeopardize children's well-being or development. If our goal is to ensure that children enter school well, happy, and functioning at the peak of their developmental potential, then the supportive social systems in every community must be effective for all children and families. These systems must be made "ready" for all children and families.

Schools also must be made ready to provide developmentally and individually appropriate and inclusive early education experiences. Many schools now provide early care and education services to children even before age 3. These services can be harmful to children if they are not appropriate for this developmental age group, e.g., focusing on academics too early and using educational methods more appropriate for older children.

A correct Goal One construct would take the onus off the child and place it squarely on the social systems and factors that impact on children's development.

On behalf of parents and children who represent cultures, learning needs, languages, or other characteristics that diverge from the majority, educators are urged to reframe the concept of children being ready to learn to: "By the year 2000, community services and supports will be ready and sufficient to ensure that all children will start school healthy, happy, and functioning at the peak of their developmental potential."

Only then will we correctly describe what all of us want for children. Only then will it be clear who and what should be measured. Only then will we have a useful construct that does not imply a pass/fail eligibility criterion for children that leads to exclusion, discrimination, and segregation.

COPYRIGHT 1995 American Association of School Administrators
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group