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NCEDL Spotlights 3

National Center for Early Development and Learning
September
1998
Assessing Readiness

Readiness is a process that occurs over time and in context. It is not complete by the first day of kindergarten, nor is it something that can be evaluated by a brief, simple test. It is much more than a child?s knowledge of a few skills that are displayed in the first few weeks of kindergarten, or behavior patterns that are consistent with those of compliant children who have unnaturally long attention spans. Readiness is a context-dependent process that requires a period of common schooling before it can be assessed meaningfully.