ABSTRACT
School readiness is the first of six national education goals for the United States. "By the year 2000, all children in America will start school ready to learn" (U.S. Department of Education, 1990). Both President Bush and the nation's governors endorsed this goal in the National Education Goals, emphasizing the tremendous importance of preparing U.S. schools (and their students) to be the very best as we enter the twenty-first century. One of the dangers ofmeeting such a goal has been in the administration of readiness and screening tests to locate preschool children who are not ready to learn at the start of school. In an effort to identify and serve the children having the greatest preschool needs, readiness and screening tests have, paradoxically, served to prematurely label the nation's poorest and most disadvantaged. Where standardized testing has historically been reserved for the more fully developed student, it has, driven by an insatiable desire for profit from testing companies, discovered a surprisingly lucrative market in the testing ofyoung children. How these tests are used can have severe consequences for children who score poorly-particularly non-mainstream children whose home environments are so different from the traditional school environment. These concerns become increasingly important in light of the President's emphasis on the value ofschool readiness for all children today. This paper will examine critical issues of school readiness assessments in regard to special populations based on the principles of post-formal thinking.
