Running Head: READINESS FOR SCHOOL

A conceptual integrative review of the literature on readiness for school

and how it perpetuates deficit thinking

Katie Mathew

Drexel University

EDUC 843
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K. Mathew 2

Abstract:

Readiness for school comprises skills related to three key areas: literacy, numeracy and social-

emotional skills. Kindergarten readiness screening is common practice across the United States

and is said to measure students’ performance on the three areas. A significant body of research

has linked readiness with important school outcomes and a child’s readiness for school is seen as

an indicator of future school performance. Factors that have been shown to affect readiness,

however, are biased and contribute to a deficit narrative that “Others” marginalized American

families. Alternative approaches to the study and practice of readiness are explored.
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Introduction

The issue of readiness for kindergarten is of intense concern for researchers, educators,

policy-makers and parents. Readiness, also known as kindergarten readiness or school readiness,

is conceived of as a set of school skills that position a child for success in the early years of

formal schooling and beyond. The core readiness skills most commonly highlighted by

researchers, educators and policy-makers are literacy, numeracy and social-emotional skills. A

considerable body of research has established that these skills predict academic achievement in

later school years (Duncan et al., 2007; Duncan et al., 2020).

Most of the theoretical and empirical literature that explores readiness links the

development of these skills with factors within the child’s environment such as quality and

access to early childhood education and parental characteristics. This latter factor, the role of

parents, bears intense scrutiny in the literature. The result is that the majority of research on

readiness focuses on identifying deficiencies in parenting. Factors such as low parental

education, quality of parenting, poverty, stress and depression, for example, have been correlated

with lower readiness skills (Anderson et al., 2019; Mackintosh & Rowe, 2021; Woodburn

Cavadel & Frye; 2017; Jeon et al., 2020; Hur et al., 2015; Greenwood et al., 2020). The literature

is replete with papers that propose interventions to mitigate these deficiencies in parenting, that

are aimed at boosting readiness skills in low-income children.

The research narrative on readiness is deeply problematic as the deficiencies of parenting

identified in the literature are often associated with families who are economically and

historically marginalized. The research, policy and practices connected with readiness propagates

deficit thinking that actively “Others” marginalized families and initiates the reproduction of

inequality before a child even sets foot in a formal school environment. The etiology of the
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current conception of readiness can be traced through the research and policies from the 1960’s

to now, and can be attributed to the rise of neoliberalist and meritocratic influences on the

education system.

A few scholars have critiqued the commonly held conceptions of readiness (Akaba et al.,

2020; McCloskey, 2021; Yoon, 2015; Iorio & Parnell, 2015). These scholars have called for

more critical perspectives in the research literature. For example, views that take a strengths-

based approach to exploring children and families’ funds of knowledge. Evolution in the

conception of readiness are direly needed in order to supplant the deficit thinking that abounds in

the research literature and educational policy. In this paper, the following questions are

addressed through a critical, integrative review of the recent literature (2015 - 2021) on readiness

in North America:

1. How is readiness defined and measured in the United States?

2. How do current conceptions of readiness in the United States contribute to deficit

narratives and the reproduction of hegemony in the early school years?

Methodology for literature review

The first part of this paper will present a brief historical overview of the political and

ideological forces that have led to current conceptions of readiness. The next part of the paper

will explore the first research question through an integrative literature review by presenting the

current literature on the topic of kindergarten readiness skills. Integrative literature review is a

form of research that reviews, critiques, and synthesizes representative literature on a topic in an

integrated way such that new frameworks and perspectives on the topic are generated (Torraco,

2005). The literature reviewed here is bounded within the timeframe of 2015 to 2021 and is

geographically limited to research conducted on readiness in the United States. Education

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Research Complete was used as the search engine to complete this review. Education Research

Complete covers the areas of curriculum instruction, administration, policy, funding and related

social issues. Topics covered include all levels of education from early childhood to higher

education and all educational specialties, such as multilingual education, health education and

testing (EBSCO, 2021).

Across the literature, kindergarten readiness and school readiness are variously used by

scholars, but both terms essentially connote the same thing. In this paper, readiness and school

readiness are considered synonyms; for the purposes of this review readiness is used as the broad

term that describes the set of school skills, knowledge and attitudes that enable young children to

attain success in school. Both kindergarten readiness and school readiness were used as primary

search terms. Secondary search terms included literacy, numeracy, social emotional skills, and

parents (see Table 1). Studies which were conducted on readiness in locations other than the

United States were excluded from this review. Research studies related to the readiness of

special populations of students (ie: special education, English Language Learners) were deemed

beyond the scope of this review at this time.

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Table 1 Integrative literature review search terms and number of results (2015 – 2021)

Primary Search Terms Secondary Search Terms Number of Papers

Kindergarten readiness Literacy 12

Numeracy 2

Social emotional skills 3

Parents 15

School readiness Literacy 162

Numeracy 27

Social emotional skills 19

Parents 251

TOTAL 491

Data source: Education Research Complete

The second part of this paper examines research question two by using a conceptual

approach to challenge the dominant research narrative on readiness. According to Callahan

(2010), conceptual papers use theory to offer alternative ways to consider implications

confronting the field and authors selectively choose key pieces of literature that support a

particular perspective that is put forth for consideration. The literature reviewed in this second

part of the paper was yielded using primary search terms: kindergarten readiness and school

readiness, and secondary search terms: critique and urban schooling (see Table 2). Again, papers

which were primarily focused on readiness in locations other than the United States were

excluded from this review.

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Table 2 Conceptual review search terms and number of results (2015 – 2021)

Primary Search Term Secondary Search Terms Number of Papers

Kindergarten readiness Critique 0

Urban 6

School readiness Critique 3

Urban 37

TOTAL 46

Data source: Education Research Complete

1. How is readiness conceived and measured?

Historical Context

Before addressing the question of how readiness is currently conceived, it is important to

explore the historical and political underpinnings of what led to the current understanding.

Various American policies have been guided by the notion that achievement resides within the

individual student and is primarily determined by family background, not external social

influences (see Table 3). The focus on student outcomes began with the Coleman Report of

1966, which showed that when school resources were held constant, family background had the

most significant impact on student academic outcomes (Coleman et al., 1966). The Coleman

Report ushered in a movement aimed at closing the achievement gap between Black and White

students, which is a force that is still very apparent today in American education. The report also

set the standard for empirical study in education which has largely focused on the influence of

individual factors on student achievement within the educational system. The idea that

achievement is tied to individual students’ effort and unitary family influence is related to the

economic and political model of neoliberalism which emphasizes the agency of the individual in

the free-market economy and de-emphasizes the role of the state.

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Scholars have argued that neoliberalism is the most prominent ideology currently

influencing educational reform in the United States (Brown, 2019). Neoliberalism emphasizes

the progress and success of the economy and has influenced educational reforms by focusing on

the needs of the market rather than the social good (McCloskey, 2021). Inherent in neoliberalism

is the idea of meritocracy. Meritocracy is the belief that every individual has an equal chance for

success in the economy and each individual’s success or failure within the economy is tied to

their work ethic, rather than their social situation. Khan (2010) argues that meritocracy is a social

arrangement like any other: it is a loose set of rules that can be adapted in order to obscure

advantages, all the while justifying them on the basis of collective values. Both neoliberalism

and meritocracy justify power structures that “Other” those who do not or cannot fit within this

value system.

Neoliberalism as a political ideology rose in prominence in the United States in the

1970’s and was actualized in educational policy in 1983 with the reform: A Nation at Risk

(Gardner, 1983). The report argued that schools in the United States were failing compared to

international counterparts. As a result, a number of local, state and federal education reform

efforts were set in motion which laid the foundation for the accountability movement in

American education. Accountability in education is tied to the neoliberalist ideology that

performance is a reflection of individuals’ innate capacity and work. The accountability era in

American education was formalized by No Child Left Behind in 2001 (Brown, 2019). The

adoption of Common Core State Standards by various states in the 2000’s represented increased

attempts to quantify what students are learning in school into discrete skills and universal

standards. Race to the Top (2009) tied student achievement via test scores to teacher evaluations.

These educational reforms have enacted neoliberalism and meritocracy and allowed for their
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proliferation across the education system. McCloskey (2021) argues that, for kindergarten

students, these ideologies and reforms emphasize specific readiness skills for success on future

standardized assessments. The combination of neoliberalist forces in education policy and the

underlying ethos that student achievement resides within the individual child and the family

environment has had massive implications for current conceptions of readiness.

Table 3 Historical Overview of Education Policy that has Influenced Readiness

Year Policy Description

1966 Coleman Report Found that the only significant correlation in factors
that influence students’ school outcomes is family
background.

1983 A Nation at Risk Asserted that American students were failing

relation to international peers.

2001 No Child Left Behind Scaled up the federal government’s role in holding
schools accountable for student outcomes.

2009 Race to the Top Competitive federal grant funding that rewarded
states for enacting measures of educator
effectiveness, adoption of common core standards,
expansion of charter schools, turning around low-
performing schools and building and using data
systems.

2009 Common Core State Cross-national description of the skills students

Standards Initiative should have at each grade level. Tied learning
outcomes to testing.

Readiness Skills

The predominant literature on readiness focuses on three key skill area: literacy,

numeracy, and social-emotional skills. These comprise the set of skills that are measured in the

vast majority of kindergarten screening tools and a child’s performance within these core areas
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sorts them into students who are likely to succeed in school and students who are at-risk for

academic and/or behavioral difficulties.

Readiness that is associated with literacy centers on young children’s demonstration of

skills such as letter identification, letter writing, phonemic awareness, and concepts of print.

Essentially, the more a child can demonstrate these specific literacy skills, the more they are said

to be ready for school. The recent empirical literature on readiness and literacy is focused on

research that explores differences in the demonstration of literacy skills. For instance, a study by

Fernald, Marchman & Weisleder (2013) found that significant disparities in vocabulary and

language processing efficiency were already evident at 18 months between infants from higher-

and lower-SES families, and by 24 months there was a six-month gap between SES groups in

processing skills critical to language development. This study led to the sensationalist claim that,

by school entry, there is a 30-million word gap between children from the wealthiest and

children from the poorest families. Efforts to mitigate this “word gap” have been adopted by

early childhood organizations (NAEYC, 2014) and the literature is littered with intervention

studies aimed at boosting readiness for low income, minority students through remedial reading

programs (Anderson et al., 2019) and summer programs (McLeod et al., 2019).

Early math skills have been found to be a strong predictor of later academic achievement,

stronger than reading, attention and social behavior at kindergarten entry (Duncan et al., 2007).

Although numeracy is often cited as an important readiness skill and is included in most

readiness screening tools, there is significantly less research emphasis on numeracy as compared

to literacy. For instance, a search which includes “school readiness” and “numeracy” yields 27

results, whereas a search which includes “school readiness” and “literacy” yields 162 results.

Readiness that is associated with numeracy is focused on skills such as number sense, counting,
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basic operations and measurement. Of the studies which explore children’s numeracy skills as

they relate to readiness, most focus on findings related to children’s cognitive development,

especially working memory and attention (Litowski et al., 2020). Interestingly, some researchers

have recently taken the approach of exploring numeracy skills in parallel to social-emotional

skills (Mackintosh & Rowe, 2021), acknowledging the conceptual crossover of cognitive control

across math and social skills.

In recent years, there have been other research efforts to isolate and account for the

specific influence of social-emotional skills on readiness. A longitudinal study by Józsa and

Barrett (2018) found that children’s negative reactions to challenge negatively predicted

measures of school performance over and above the predictive power of SES and IQ. Similarly,

Hamerslag et al. (2018) found that there was a negative association between different behavioral

phenotypes (emotional and behavioral problems) and learning performance on standardized

language and numeracy tests, making a case for the prioritization of children’s’ socio-emotional

readiness for school over academic readiness.

Kindergarten Screening Tools

A significant driver of the assessment and study of core readiness skills, literacy,

numeracy and social-emotional skills, is kindergarten screening tools. Kindergarten screening

tools are used to capture children’s readiness either before school entry or shortly thereafter.

Screening is argued to be vital for identifying academic and behavioral issues for students at-risk

for future difficulties and the use of kindergarten screeners are tantamount to standard practice at

school entry across North America. Most commonly, kindergarten screening tools are centered

around testing children’s literacy and numeracy skills. Screening tools can be locally or federally

mandated; for instance, the Texas Kindergarten Entry assessment was designed to meet Texas
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state education agency requirements and measures school readiness domains such as language,

literacy, math, science, executive function, and social emotional skills (Montroy, 2020).

Recently, efforts have been made to evaluate bias in kindergarten screening tools (Houri

& Miller, 2020) and to develop more holistic screening assessments (EDI). A review by Houri &

Miller (2020) evaluated eleven screening scales and identified various biases associated with

each of the scales reviewed. Their recommendation to educators is to select the screening scale

most appropriate for the characteristics of the school population. In other words, all screening

tools carry bias, choose the tool that has the biases that best fit the population where it is being

applied. Other efforts have suggested reforming screening practices by having teachers fill out

ratings based on student observations rather than having students complete a screening test.

Teacher ratings have been shown to be more reliable than screening scales (Stormont et al.,

2017) at predicting later academic performance and social-emotional adjustment. The Early

Development Instrument (EDI), for instance, is a measure of school readiness skills based on

teacher-reported observational recall which has been used extensively in Canada and Australia

and is in the early stages of adoption in a number of U.S. cities, and has been shown to predict

third grade proficiency in mathematics and English Language Arts (Duncan et al., 2020).

Furthermore, a study of 40,000 children showed no systematic bias in the EDI across gender,

English as a second language status, and minority status (Guhn et al., 2007).

The Role of Parents

There is a strong focus on the role of parents in their children’s readiness throughout the

literature. Parental factors such as: SES, level of education, school involvement, home language

use, mother autonomy, father involvement, and parental stress and depression have been studied

in recent years in regards to their influence on children’s readiness. This line of inquiry can be
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traced back to the Coleman Report (Coleman et al., 1966), which fomented researchers’ focus on

the role of family factors in children’s academic outcomes starting in the 1960’s. A deficit

orientation is pervasive with respect to how the current research literature conceptualizes the role

of parents in readiness. For instance, Greenwood et al. (2020) state that “preventing the word gap

will depend on the capacity (of researchers and policymakers) to change the individual

communication styles of adults, families and caregivers use to interact with young children”.

This statement asserts that certain communication styles are acceptable for school, whereas other

communication styles (ie: of the family) are not. In another example, Loughlin-Presnal &

Bierman (2017) suggest “a need (for educators and researchers) to attend to the beliefs parents

hold about their child’s academic potential when designing interventions to enhance the school

success of children in low-income families”. This statement assumes that lower-economic status

parents have lower academic aspirations for their children. In yet another example, a series of

studies by Meuwissen and Carlson (2018) establishes links between mother autonomy and father

involvement with children’s executive functions. The study focuses on traditional

conceptualizations of the nuclear family as consisting of a mother and father. This narrow focus

on the traditional makeup of the family implies that deviance from this family composition is

negative and Meuwissen and Carlson’s (2018) study confirms this bias, in effect, by showing

that the absence of a father has negative implications for readiness.

Overall, the research literature’s emphasis on the role of parents in children’s readiness

sets up a deficit narrative with respect to the United States’ most disadvantaged families. The

dominant literature argues that parenting behaviors associated with high SES families lead to

high readiness and, ultimately, academic success throughout the school years, whereas the

parenting behaviors associated with low SES families lead to low readiness and academic and/or
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behavioral difficulties. In this view, kindergarten screening tools act essentially as sorting

mechanisms that stream children into those who are likely to succeed and those who are likely to

fail academically, based on family background. This frame of thinking most certainly has

damaging consequences for marginalized children and ignores the role of the school as well as

the funds of knowledge that all children, regardless of socio-economic background, bring to

school.

2. How do current conceptions of readiness contribute to deficit narratives and the

reproduction of hegemony in the early school years?

The Reproduction of Hegemony through Readiness

Consistent with neoliberalist ideology, current conceptions of readiness place attention on

the child and the family rather than the state or the society. This enables accountability for failure

(or success) to be attributed to the individual. Apple (1995) argued that the curricular and

pedagogic practices that are used to organize the routines in most schools play a large part in

enabling students to internalize failure based on this sorting process as an individual problem. In

this case, the sorting process of screening for kindergarten readiness serves to establish that the

locus of responsibility for academic achievement resides within the individual child, and in

conjunction, the family, and not upon the school or state. Establishing a student’s academic

potential through readiness screening, which is heavily dependent on biased family factors,

allows the school to divorce itself from a student’s potential academic struggles, blaming instead

any challenges encountered upon the student’s family background.

Bourdieu (1977) contends that there is a strong relationship between family background

and the hegemonic structure of society that is reproduced through schooling. For Bourdieu, the

most important development anointed by family background is language. Bourdieu states:

The influence of linguistic capital, particularly manifest in the first years of schooling
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when the understanding and use of language are the major points of leverage for teachers’

assessments, never ceases to be felt: style is always taken into account, implicitly or

explicitly, at every level of the educational system and, to a varying extent, in all

university careers, even scientific ones. Moreover, language is not simply an instrument

of communication: it also provides, together with a richer or poorer vocabulary, a more or

less complex system of categories so that the capacity to decipher and manipulate

complex structures, whether logical or aesthetic, depends partly on the complexity of the

language transmitted by the family. (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 73)

In short, children learn language through their family; certain forms of language are privileged

within the hegemonic system perpetuated by schooling; teachers sort students based on their

language systems. Furthermore, language is an implicit pedagogy in school, meaning that

mastery is expected, but not explicitly taught by the teacher (Bourdieu, 1977) thereby upholding

the existing power structures that endure within society.

Bourdieu is careful to assert that teachers are at the mercy of the dominant neoliberal

forces and structures that abound within the education system, which require that they transmit

accountability onto the individual student rather than the state. In a sense, teachers are

transferring the accountability that is enacted upon them by the state, onto the student. Apple

(1995) adds that because of these neoliberalist forces that guide education, purposeful, reasoning,

and well-intentioned teachers, may be latently serving ideological functions at the same moment

that they are seeking to alleviate some of the problems facing individual students and others. In

sum, neoliberalism has shifted the dominant narratives around readiness to academic skills and

academically focused pedagogy to meet the demands of heightened expectations and

accountability (Akaba et al., 2020).

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Critiques of Kindergarten Readiness

Although some empirical research that shows associations between certain educational

experiences, family factors and subsequent academic success are valuable, it is clear that

qualifiers of excellence are closely related to assumptions embedded in the policies, curriculum,

and pedagogy that presently define both the early childhood and K-12 education systems

(Lebowitz, 2016). It is important analyze these assumptions and apply a critical view in

designing and evaluating studies that measure factors related to readiness. In the past six years, a

few notable efforts have been made to apply a critical lens to the concept of readiness. For

instance, in her dissertation, McCloskey (2021) argues that discourses around readiness “Others”

both educators and the children and families they serve, identifying all of them as in need of

being controlled or governed. As a way to overcome these “Othering” forces, she suggests the

collaborative engagement of teachers and parents in process learning about the contradictions

and cultural-historical influences inherent in conceptions of readiness. Yoon (2014) adds that

educators find themselves ostensibly under pressure to close the achievement gap and to impose

‘higher’ standards on children; early educators, especially, are threatened by the mantra that

performance in the early grades are indicators of their performance through the rest of school.

Yoon suggests that expanded notions of what literacy means are needed, especially in early

childhood education, and assessment data should be interrogated with an explicit focus on issues

of race, class and gender. In a book entitled Rethinking Readiness in Early Childhood Education

(Iorio & Parnell, 2015), 29 scholar-authors attempt to move away from deficit orientations and

call for more strengths-based and holistic views of readiness.

Kindergarten Readiness in Urban Contexts

A number of papers in recent years have investigated readiness in urban contexts

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consistent with a perspective that views students and their families from a more strengths-based

lens. For instance, Whittingham et al. (2018) held focus group discussions with childcare

providers and parents of preschoolers in an African American community. During the

conversations it became clear that both parents and providers engage in a number of practices to

prepare children to use the standard variety of English privileged by mainstream schooling.

Parents and providers discussed the need to build a bridge for children between the English

varieties used at home and the standard English valued by schools. In a different study, Rispoli et

al. (2019) highlight the need for culturally specific early intervention to support parents in

shaping early social–emotional skills in children. Iruka et al. (2020) used readiness data from the

Early Childhood Longitudinal Study and a strengths-based approach to determine profiles of

Black girls’ and boys’ readiness skills. She found that, by focusing specifically on data on Black

girls and boys, this group of children demonstrated readiness skills that have gone

unacknowledged in other studies.

These studies use a first-hand approach to explore the role of families in readiness and

avoid a deficit orientation by understanding that all families bear sources of strength that need to

be celebrated and acknowledged in the early school years. Underscoring this point is research

that shows that children from all income backgrounds benefit in socioeconomically diverse

learning environments – in academic preparedness and in other ways that prepare them for

success in a diverse workforce and society (Slicker & Hustedt, 2020).

Conclusion

It is clear that strengths-based approaches are badly needed in the field of readiness research

and practice, especially with regards to establishing action-oriented partnerships between policy-

makers, researchers, families and early childhood educators. Previous approaches, inspired by
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neoliberalist ideology enacted through education policy, emphasize the characteristics of

individual students, and related family factors, and their correlation with levels of literacy,

numeracy and social-emotional readiness. The current approach cultivates a deficit view of

marginalized families and establishes a negative dynamic between the school and the family that

is fraught with negative judgement from the start.

Readiness is a well-established marker of children’s preparation for school. In this current

age of testing and accountability, it is not likely that readiness as a concept can be completely

shirked. However, it is important for researchers and practitioners to think critically about where

conceptions of readiness fit in the larger scheme of children’s schooling. Of particular import, is

how concepts of readiness initiate the cycle of reproduction of social hegemony before a child

even sets foot in a formal school environment.

Researchers and practitioners can work within the framework of readiness but push

associated practices ahead by applying a more equity-minded approach. For instance,

practitioners can select readiness screening tools that have been shown to be less biased (Guhn et

al., 2007), involve parents in dialogues on the topic of readiness (McCloskey, 2021;

Whittingham, 2018) while simultaneously increasing parental awareness about social-emotional

skills (Rispoli et al., 2019), and purposefully create classes of students with socio-economically

diverse backgrounds (Slicker & Hustedt, 2020). Researchers can analyze readiness data with a

specific focus on gender, race and class (Yoon, 2014), expand traditional conceptions of who is

included in a family (Meuwissen and Carlson, 2018), and utilize a strengths-based approach in

their research design (Iruka et al., 2020). A promising framework that has yet to be applied to the

study and practice of readiness is funds of knowledge, which inspires teachers to study

household knowledge and draw upon this knowledge to develop a participatory pedagogy (Moll,
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Amanti, Nefi & Gonzalez, 1992).

With respect to policy initiatives, education reform that empowers teachers, families and

children is needed. Movement away from neoliberalist education policies, which focus on the

individual’s responsibility to control their own destiny, is needed. Especially with respect to very

young children - it seems ridiculous to expect that a 4-year-old child, and their family, is solely

responsible for their school success or failure. All children are born ready to learn and every

child deserves to be considered equal in their pursuit of learning. Shifting to a strengths-based

view of readiness will allow all children to benefit from the splendors of kindergarten, regardless

of family background, race, socio-economic class and gender.

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