What Do We Know about School Readiness for

What Do We Know about School Readiness for Young Children with Disabilities? Judith J. Carta, Ph. D. Juniper Gardens Children’s Project University of Kansas with help from Elaine Carlson, WESTAT

Assignment--Answer the following questions: What do we know and still need to know about the "school readiness gap" for children with disabilities? � What are some achievements in preschool that are predictors of later academic performance? � What early childhood interventions and curricula are improving school readiness outcomes? � What are likely to be the most productive areas for future research to improve school readiness with or at risk for disabilities? � What type of infrastructure do we need to guide and link research in this areas? � In 30 minutes or less!

My first response

Second Response: Considerations We don’t really have a well-defined literature on school readiness for young children with disabilities. Few longitudinal studies Which children are we referring to with disabilities? How do we define who has a disability? ▪ Categories identified in IDEA? (Speech and Language Impairment, Developmental Delay, Autism, Emotional Disturbance etc. ) ▪ High-risk children (e. g. , low birthweight) ▪ Children with multiple risks? When do we define who has a disability? Who determines whether child has a disability? ▪ Many disabilities aren’t identified until well into school (Learning Disabilities, Emotional/Behavior Disorders

Further Considerations How do we define readiness for children with disabilities? Readiness for children with disabilities has taken many forms Success in the next environment –defined by whom? Teachers? Parents? ▪ But, how much does performance in the next environment depend on the level of instructional support available in the next environment Should family outcomes of transition be considered? Should there be unique dimensions of school readiness to consider for children with disabilities?

Goals for Presentation Discuss the definitional issues around school readiness for children with disabilities Provide a broad look on what we know about the “gap” between young children with disabilities and typically developing children in preschool and kindergarten Describe what we know about preschool predictors of success in kindergarten for children with disabilities. Identify some of the interventions/curricula most likely to improve children’s readiness. Begin a discussion of the infrastructure needed to guide and lead research.

School Readiness How is it defined for children with disabilities?

What is school readiness? Children are not innately ready or not ready for school. Their skills and development are strongly influenced by their families and through their interactions with other people and environments before coming to school. Maxwell, K. , & Clifford. , R. M. ( 2004). Research in review: School readiness assessment. Young Children 59 (1): 42– 46. )

NAEYC (2004) Where we stand on school readiness “School readiness must be flexibly and broadly defined. Readiness is more than basic knowledge of language and math, important as these are. Readiness expectations should include all areas: physical, cognitive, social, and emotional competence as well as positive attitudes toward learning. ”

National Educational Goals Panel (1997) The concept of readiness includes much more than children’s readiness. Readiness includes “ready children, ready families, ready communities, ready early care and education, and ready schools. ” All are necessary so that all children will experience success.

Readiness examined for children with disabilities—different angles How are children with disabilities performing over time relative to population norms on traditional readiness indicators? Is the gap narrowing? How easy was child’s transition to kindergarten? How does the family define a successful transition? How well does kindergarten support transition for both child and family?

The “Readiness Gap” What do we know for children with disabilities?

What do we know about school readiness in general for children with disabilities? View from 35000 feet

What is happening in child performance over time for young children with disabilities? Preschool Early Education Longitudinal Study (PEELS) IES funded Among the questions it seeks to answer is: “Is the gap narrowing? ” Early literacy and Vocabulary Math Social Skills Other areas (though not reported today)

PEELS Methodology Sample size: approximately 3000 children from a stratified sample of 224 school districts Using Longitudinal Cohort Design Following 3 cohorts of children beginning in 2003 -2004 Cohort A (primarily 3 year olds) Cohort B (primarily 4 year olds) Cohort C (primarily 5 year olds) All being followed into their kindergarten year until 2009

Measures Direct child assessments on standardized and other measures Parent interview Teacher/Director interview

What does PEELS tell us about school readiness? Readiness scores—graph comparing preschool and kindergarten scores Scores reported here Emergent Literacy: Woodcock-Johnson III Letter Word Vocabulary--PPVT Math—Woodcock- Johnson III Applied Problems Social Skills: Subscale of Preschool and Kindergarten Behavior Scale All scores are standard scores with mean of 100 and sd of 15. Two means provided for each cohort and for disability type —showing one year growth.

Results Worth Noting Children with disabilities as a total sample are functioning below the population mean but are generally functioning within one standard deviation of the mean on many measures. Overall, children with disabilities are performing closest to the population mean in emergent literacy and are most distant from population mean in vocabulary. These are standard scores—children with disabilities are holding their own and in general demonstrating a normative rate of growth.

Trends in Performance Over Time In looking at improvement over time, Vocabulary is the only area of the 4 areas not showing significant growth over 2 time points for the Total Sample. Within and across outcome areas, there is a great deal of variability by type of disability. Growth Overall, children with disabilities showing significant change in literacy, applied problems and social skills; not vocabulary. Children with Developmental Delay (DD) and SLI (Speech and Language Impairments) are showing the greatest gains over time.

What slides will depict 2 slides for each of the 4 measures Literacy Math Vocabulary Social skills First slide shows mean ss for total sample and 3 age cohorts across 2 years Second slide shows mean ss for disability categories across 2 years

Percentage of Children in Disability Categories in Total PEELS Sample

PEELS: Performance Over Time Scores in Emerging Literacy (Woodcock-Johnson III: Letter Word Identification ) for Total Sample and 3 Age Cohorts *t, p<, 05 Source: USDE, NCSER, PEELS

PEELS: Performance Over Time in Emerging Literacy (Woodcock-Johnson III: Letter Word Identification ) for Total Sample and Disability Type

PEELS: Performance Over Time in Early Math Proficiency (Woodcock-Johnson III: Applied Problems) for Total Sample and 3 Age Cohorts

PEELS: Performance Over Time in Early Math Proficiency (Woodcock-Johnson III: Applied Problems) for Total Sample and Disability Type

PEELS: Performance over Time in Vocabulary (PPVT) for Total Sample and 3 Age Cohorts

PEELS: Performance Over Time in Vocabulary (PPVT ) for Total Sample and Disability Type

PEELS: Performance Over Time in Social Skills (Subscale of Preschool and Kindergarten Behavior Scale) for Total Sample and 3 Age Cohorts

PEELS: Performance Over Time in Social Skills (Preschool and Kindergarten Behavior Scales 2) for Total Sample and Disability Type

Predictors of School Readiness What are they for children with disabilities?

What we don’t know: Specific behaviors for children with disabilities that predict school success Longitudinal studies on children with disabilities are rare. Usually they are studies of a specific intervention (Jenkins et al. ) Larger population-based studies of young children seldom disaggregate children with disabilities.

What we do know about predictors of successful transition to kindergarten? From descriptive studies (PEELS, 2009; Schulting, Malone & Dodge, 2005) Factors that predict successful or EASIER transitions (as reported by parents/teachers): Child characteristics: severity of impairment, social skills and academic ability Demographics: ▪ Black and white families had easier transitions than Hispanic(2 X as many reported hard transitions) ▪ Family income (lower income 2 x as many hard transitions) School factors: ▪ Whether schools initiated actions to facilitate transitions, (e. g. , kindergarten teacher receiving records) ▪ Number of transition strategies used to help transition (more is better) ▪ Amount of support provided to teachers during transition (more is better) ▪ Match between sending and receiving classrooms during transition (Troup & Malone, 2002)

What we do know about predictors of successful transition to kindergarten? From intervention studies (e. g. , Carta et al, 1991; Kemp & Carter, 2000; Le. Ager & Shapiro, 1995; Rule et al, 1990) Interventions that taught children skills needed in next environment resulted in more successful transition to kindergarten. Skills identified by teachers as important for kindergarten included: Communication, working independently, playing cooperating, participating in groups Considerable variability in what teachers identified

What do we know about factors leading to smoother transitions for families of children with disabilities? National Early Childhood Transition Center review (2009) identified a set of 13 strategies that families identified as helpful in promoting successful transitions. Among them were: Information about the next environment (Hanline, 1988; Hanson et al. , 2000; Kemp, 2003); Family involvement in decisions about future placement (Hamblin-Wilson & Thurman, 1990; Lovett & Haring, 2003); Follow-up support for families after transition (Kemp, 2003); Well organized transfer of records (Campbell, 1997)

Interventions that Promote School Readiness What are they for children with disabilities?

Research on Interventions that promote school readiness What we do have is an extensive literature on interventions that are effective in promoting children’s behaviors known to predict school readiness. • These have been validated through singlecase design and larger RCTs and quasiexperimental studies. •

Example: Intervention studies that validate specific strategies for improving children’s social skills Improving peer-related social skills ▪ Teaching children with autism to attend to and comments on their classmate’s play behavior (Goldstein et al. , 1992) ▪ Teacher-mediated social integration strategies for teaching specific skills such as social initiations, or asking a peer to share (Odom & Mc. Connell, 1993) ▪ Teaching children with communication impairments skills for entering peer group (Beilinson & Olswang, 2003)

Example: Intervention studies that validate specific strategies for improving children’s communication skills Milieu language strategies—systematic prompts for language production that parents and caregivers can embed in everyday activities that promote vocabulary development and children’s language production (Kaiser & Hester, 1994; Woods et al. , 2004) Pivotal response training—play-based strategies that teach “pivotal skills” central to a wide area of functioning (e. g. , self-management skills) (Koegel et al. , 1999)

Example: Intervention studies that validate specific strategies for improving children’s early literacy skills Shared story book reading (Justice & Pullen, 2003)

Some remaining issues on interventions to promote school readiness for young children with disabilities We need a better understanding of the variables that control WHAT WORKS, FOR WHOM and UNDER WHAT CONDITIONS. We need more longitudinal studies demonstrating long-term effectiveness. We need greater understanding of variables leading to successful scale-up of effective interventions.

Building a Research Infrastructure What is needed to promote school readiness for children with disabilities?

More emphasis on model development Researchers need more opportunities to study interventions at close range --We need to know how children’s trajectories are moving and growing in response to interventions that are implemented under conditions we know (dosage and fidelity). --When change isn’t occurring, we need to be able to make changes in the intervention.

Greater understanding of variables that affect teacher quality Researchers need to work in partnership with people who do large-scale professional development to understand challenges of: Wide-scale implementation of interventions with high fidelity Maintenance of evidence-based practice over time

Examination of long-term effects Researchers developing interventions to promote readiness need to be able to follow children into elementary grades. We need to be able to follow children beyond preschool to see if the interventions are making a difference in children’s outcomes in K-3.

Conclusions We are just beginning to learn how children with disabilities are growing in comparison to population mean on school readiness indicators—we know there is considerable variability in children. We still have much to learn about how to identify children with disabilities so that interventions to prevent failure and promote readiness can start earlier.

More Conclusions We know a lot about interventions for promoting successful transitions into kindergarten—but don’t know much about their long-term effects We need to conduct research to better understand the conditions that promote higher fidelity of implementation and greater sustainability of our interventions.

Thank you! For references, contact me at carta @ku. edu For a copy of this presentation, go to: www. CRTIEC. org.