to identify and establish standards that specify, by country, what chil-
dren know and can do (Kagan and Britto 2005). Ultimately, these
country standards could lead to global standards. The five dimen-
sions of development used for preschool children are:
- Physical health and motor development
- Social-emotional development
- Approaches toward learning
- Language and literacy
- Cognition and general knowledge.
Each of 11 countries already participating in this effort is following
a defined process for identifying and establishing standards. The ratio-
nale for adopting this country approach is to ensure development of
culturally sensitive and appropriate standards. The process includes:
- Recommendations by national experts about what the nation’s
children should know and be able to do - Recommendations by experts about the ages at which children
should accomplish a specific item - Validation of proposed standards
- Potential development of tools (e.g., for curricula development,
assessment, monitoring, evaluation) based on the standards.
In the United States, school readiness first became an education
priority in 1989—as the first of five national goals for education. Dur-
ing the 1990s, educators debated with vigor the definition of school
readiness. This lack of consensus was due in part to the dearth of data
on the status of children at school entry. Readiness might, for exam-
ple, refer to how ready to learn children are as they begin school orto
how well equipped schools are to receive children and measure their
development (Kagan 1990).
The United States still has not developed a population-based tool
to assess child development, at school entry or earlier, or to measure
children’s readiness for school. In 1998, the country took a signifi-
cant step forward by initiating The Early Childhood Longitudinal
278 J. Fraser Mustard and Mary Eming Young