Investigation of Parents' Beliefs about Readiness for Kindergarten: An Examination of National Household Education Survey (NHES: 93)

The purpose of this study was to clarify our understanding of the structure of parents' beliefs about kindergarten readiness, and the relationship between those beliefs and parenting practices. Based upon the results of data analyses using the National Household Education Survey (NHES: 93), social-interaction skills were reported as being more important for kindergarten readiness than were academic skills. In order to clarify typologies underlying parents' beliefs, we conducted a cluster analysis which revealed three definable groups: 'Typical', 'High standards', and 'Low academic emphasis' groups. Other analyses suggested that views of kindergarten readiness varied across demographic characteristics such as age, education, income, and ethnic background. Most interesting was the finding that there is no strong consistency between parents' beliefs and their activities with their children at home. Implications for policy and suggestions for future research were also discussed Whereas original ideas behind kindergarten emphasized children enjoying opportunities to learn socialization skills and play with other children (Cosden, Zimmer, and Tuss, 1993; Ellwein, Walsh, Eads II, & Miller, 1991), todays kindergarten has become academically oriented. This "escalation of curriculum" (Shepard & Smith, 1988) has resulted in parents who hold their children back a year from kindergarten if they perceive them to have "poor readiness. " Although there is no clear evidence that holding results in improvement of children's readiness (Walsh, Ellwein, Eads, & Miller, 1991), many parents believe that their children need more time in preschool to develop the prerequisite skills to function successfully in kindergarten. Whether or not parents' beliefs rest on accurate understandings of their children's developmental status, they are a critical component in determining the tuning of their children's enrollment (Piotrkowski, Botsko, & Matthews, 2001). The meaning of parents' beliefs about kindergarten readiness can be summarized as 'readiness for school' and 'readiness to learn' (Kagan, 1992; 1994). Headiness for school' refers to the belief that a child must have a certain level of mastery of pre-academic skills before entering kindergarten. 'Readiness for school' determines not only placement of children, but also instructional planning at kindergarten (Shepard & Smith, 1986; 1988). Parents who have strong beliefs in 'readiness for school' tend to hold children out of kindergarten until they are older than other children (Meisels, 1992). In contrast, 'readiness to learn' focuses on children's developmental maturation or biological growth. According to this perspective, it is not important to know about children's learning prior to entering kindergarten, but rather their natural or biological growth, which, will presumably determine their ability to learn in school. Thus, if parents have concerns about their children's readiness, they can wait until the child shows developmental growth, and their concerns abate. This approach to readiness emphasizes the 'gift of time' (Eisenhart & Graue, 1990;Shepard & Smith, 1988), in that it assumes that readiness is rooted in developmentally predetermined physical and social maturation processes. As a result of holding these beliefs, many parents want to keep their children at home in order to avoid early failure in school. Unfortunately, neither the 'ready for school' nor 'ready to learn' philosophy reflects reality because children's readiness for kindergarten is not simply determined by pre-academic skills or developmental maturation (Graue, 1992). Parents may not understand that readiness is also determined by regional characteristics including curriculum design, educational philosophy, and social consensus in each community. Even within the same school district, understanding about readiness can vary (Graue, 1992). As such, a "ready child" in one region, school district or school can be understood as a 'not ready child' in other regions (Graue, 1993). …