Challenging the School Readiness Agenda in Early Childhood Education

by Miriam B. Tager

Overview

Challenging the normative paradigm that school readiness is a positive and necessary objective for all young children, this book asserts that the concept is a deficit-based practice that fosters the continuation of discriminatory classifications. Tager draws on findings of a qualitative study to reveal how the neoliberal agenda of school reform based on high-stakes testing sorts and labels children as non-ready, affecting their overall schooling careers. Tager reflects critically on the relationship between race and school readiness, showing how the resulting exclusionary measures perpetuate the marginalization of low-income Black children from an early age. Disrupting expected notions of readiness is imperative to ending practices of structural classism and racism in early childhood education.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781317204664
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	03/27/2017
Series:	Routledge Research in Early Childhood Education Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	136
File size:	631 KB

About the Author

Miriam B. Tager is Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education at Westfield State University, USA.

Table of Contents

One – Introducing the Non-school ready child

Two – The Historical Context of the Non-school Ready Child

Three – The Ecology of School Readiness

Four – Higher Demands: Putting Pressure on the Non-school Ready Child

Five – Blaming the Parent

Six – Young Black Lives Matter

Seven – Inequities and Inequalities in Early Childhood Education Programs

Eight – A Call for Action