The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of PAVEd for Success, comprehensive preliteracy program guidelines to support the development of foundational preliteracy skills in 4 year olds. Prekindergarten teachers received professional development on variables of the program that included a summer institute, after-school workshops, and classroom support from preliteracy specialists. Children were assessed at prekindergarten entry, following the implementation period and at the end of the school year. Vocabulary knowledge, phonological awareness, and alphabet knowledge were assessed during the prekindergarten year, and early literacy indicators and early decoding skills were assessed at the end of the kindergarten year. While all experimental variables showed some benefits to the development of children's preliteracy skills, only the full program benefited children who entered the prekindergarten program at risk for reading difficulties. The program participants benefited in early literacy and decoding skills when compared to controls. Implementation by teachers with support and sustainability of program features without support was also evaluated. Teachers were most likely to implement and sustain program features which shared consistency with some prior literacy focus and when they were able to integrate program features across the curriculum. This research suggests that long-term change in the literacy skills of young children will involve complex and multifaceted approaches to preliteracy development.

This paper presents the design and evaluation of the Teacher Capability and School Resource Scale for Asthma Management. Based on a sample of 589 kindergarten to eighth grade teachers, the scale yielded two factors: the Teacher Capability in Social and Emotional Aspects of Asthma Management factor (α = 0.83) and the School Resources/Institutional Capability for Asthma Management (α = 0.86). This scale fills a needed gap in the literature regarding assessment tools for school-based asthma management that focus on teacher efficacy.

This study examined the extent to which social standing based on reputation (i.e., popularity), affective regard (i.e., peer acceptance and peer rejection), and affiliation‐network centrality (i.e., degree, betweenness, and closeness centrality), in addition to gender and grade in school, predicted children's accuracy in detecting affiliation patterns within peer networks. Third through fifth‐grade students (n = 400) were from three semi‐rural elementary schools and clustered in eight grade‐level units. The relationship between a child's perception of the affiliation (i.e., “hanging‐out”) network and the collective perception of the affiliation network served as the indicator of network perception accuracy. In general, girls, older children, and more popular and well‐connected children had more accurate perceptions of the social environment. In particular, girls, popular children, children with high degrees centrality, and fifth graders, were more likely to report ties that existed in the collectively perceived network (made fewer false‐negative reports). Fifth graders’ specific patterns of accuracy/inaccuracy suggested a more developed cognitive model of social network structures. Children experiencing peer rejection made more false negative errors (failed to report existing ties). Interestingly, net of the other network variables in the model, closeness centrality was related to a decrease in falsely reporting ties (improving accuracy) but an increase in failing to report ties that existed (worsening accuracy). These relationships between children's social standing and grade level on their accuracy of network perception has conceptual and methodological implications for studies of children's social functioning within their school‐based peer networks.