KINDERGARTEN READINESS: THE EFFECTS OF CULTURE ON KINDERGARTEN READINESS STANDARDS
The increasing tendency of the American education system to flood society with high school graduates possessing questionable academic skills, together with increasing demands for such skills by institutions of higher education, employers, and society generally cause (a) many parents to push their children into academically challenging endeavors at every earlier ages, (b) many educators to seek strategies that minimize adverse exposure to accountability standards, and (c) many children to continue to flounder in the American educational system (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2004). Increasing diversity in the American population compounds these issues and outcomes as the dichotomies between the cultural backgrounds of children entering the educational system and cultural norms underlying American educators and school systems in the United States increase.
There is a multiplicity of points of intersection involving the issues affecting outcomes in the American educational system. One such intersection that is gaining in prominence is the issue of kindergarten readiness. Many parents, in an effort to enhance the chances that a child will excel academically, push for early (chronologically) entry into kindergarten. At the same time, many educators and school systems, in efforts to avoid sanctions related to the No Child Left Behind Program, increasingly attempt to delay entry into kindergarten on an assumption that consequent improvements in a child's maturation will lower the probability of academic failure (Joles, 2003). In such instances, variations in cultural perspectives (the values being emphasized) lead to different assessments of the standards for kindergarten readiness.
In other instances, problems develop when the cultural values of families newly arrived in the United States clash with school policies and pra...