1st Edition

Challenging the School Readiness Agenda in Early Childhood Education

By Miriam B. Tager Copyright 2017
    136 Pages
    by Routledge

    136 Pages
    by Routledge

    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.

    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

    Biography

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