Assessing the school readiness of kindergarten children

This dissertation designed and evaluated a screening battery to predict the school performance of kindergarten children. At the start of the school year, 71 students were administered the Bracken Basic Concept Scale-Revised (BBCS-R; Bracken, in development), the Geometric Design of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-Revised (Wechsler, 1989), and the Parent Form of the Social Skills Rating System (SSKS; Gresham & Elliot, 1990). Their performance on these measures was used to predict the following outcome measures (collected in the Spring): retention or referral for services; teacher ratings of first grade readiness; ratings on the Academic Competence Scale of the SSRS; and scores on the Metropolitan Readiness Test-Sixth Edition (MRT-6; Nurss & McGauvran, 1995). The School Readiness Composite of the BBCS-R was found to be the best predictor of school success. Specifically, it predicted which children were most likely to be retained in grade with 82 to 94% accuracy. It was also significant in predicting teachers' ratings of students' readiness for first grade, SSRS teacher ratings, and MRT-6 scores. No significant gender or race differences were found on any of the Fall predictor variables or Spring outcome measures.