The State of State Prekindergarten Standards in 2003.

Currently, an increasing number of states support school readiness programs, recognizing that high quality early childhood education positively affects all children's success in school and the quality of their future. Recent federal initiatives, including Good Start Grow Smart, the revised guidance for the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) state plans, and the reauthorization of Head Start, call upon states to enhance these efforts, by developing or rigorously reviewing their prekindergarten guidelines or standards in literacy, language, and mathematics to be in alignment with state K-12 standards. This report/policy brief examines the quality of state prekindergarten standards in language, literacy, and mathematics. Recognizing that states are at various stages of development, the analysis in the report was designed to highlight quality standards, and to provide feedback to states in the process of establishing, reviewing, or strengthening prekindergarten standards. In this policy brief, methods and analytic tools for examining quality are described. (NKA)