Bridging the Transition to Kindergarten: School Readiness Case Studies from California’s First 5 Initiative

Recent advances in science have underscored how critical children’s first five years of life are to their later success in school and life. It has also been recently recognized that early childhood interventions, particularly those that combine child-focused educational activities with parent-child relationship building, can positively influence children’s readiness for school, particularly for those at-risk for poor developmental outcomes. Though early childhood services have traditionally received fewer resources than those for school-aged children or adults, many states have tried to address this inequity by sponsoring early childhood initiatives aimed at providing comprehensive health and social services to children ages 0 to 5 and their families. The current article presents an overview of one such initiative—California’s First 5—and provides three Southern California case studies of how it is being implemented at the county level. Implications for policy makers, school psychologists, and other educational stakeholders are discussed.