Ready to Enter: What Research Tells Policymakers About Strategies to Promote Social and Emotional School Readiness among Three- and Four-Year-Old Children

This policy paper focuses on what emerging research tells policymakers about why it is so important to intervene to help young children at risk for poor social, emotional, and behavioral development and the kinds of research-based interventions that seem most effective. It addresses: the relationship between early academic learning and emotional development; the prevalence of emotional problems in preschool-aged young children; the role of teachers and child care providers in reducing or exacerbating problems; and the emerging but still limited research on the efficacy of preventive and early interventions explicitly targeted to address the social, emotional, and behavioral difficulties of young children, particularly in the context of early care and education settings.