Comparing Parents’ and Teachers’ Rank-Ordered Importance of Early School Readiness Characteristics

As the pressure to succeed academically is imposed on children earlier than ever before, it is essential to understand what characteristics are most important to parents and teachers in order to be school ready. While formally readiness is typically measured using chronological age and mastery of cognitive skills, it also involves physical, behavioral and social-emotional development. Variability exists culturally as to the importance of these various early school readiness characteristics. Moreover, while parents and teachers generally agree, discrepancies between parents and teachers on the importance of specific components for early school readiness arise. In the current study, we examined which characteristics of early school readiness were deemed most and least important according to parents and teachers of 30–42 months old children. Our findings indicate that teachers and parents agreed upon the relative importance of early school readiness components. For both groups, being healthy, happy, and socially skilled were generally ranked as more important than cognitive abilities in the preschool aged child. These conclusions are promising because children’s success is facilitated when parents and teachers share beliefs on which skills children need to successfully transition into the classroom environment.