This paper is the first in a series of reports dealing with the development and standardization of a battery of behavioral rating scales designed to identify children at the kindergarten and pre-kindergarten levels who are likely to achieve m d adjust poorly in the elementary grades. The development of the Schenectady Kindergarten Rating Scales (SKRS) was undertaken to meet the need for economical means of screening large numbers of children so that remedial or preventive services can be provided as early in their school careers as possible.
The present project is an attempt to develop means of avoiding the cost of using mental health professionals for screening, and of avoiding many of the disadvantages inherent in most referral systems. The SKRS have been designed to obtain observations from kindergarten teachers on a wide range of activities to provide a comprehensive picture of a child's classroom behavior. The information obtained is essentially descriptive rather than evaluative, consequently teachers are not asked to draw tenuous conclusions about adjustment.
A four year longitudinal study is under way to evaluate the reliability of the SKRS, the extent to which they correlate with more expensive screening procedures, and the extent to which they can predict learning and behavior problems in grades one through four. Thus far, kindergarten ratings have been obtained on children in the city of Schenectady over a three year period, the battery of scales has been expanded and revised, interrater reliability has been examined, and several validity studies have been initiated. The present report describes the development of the scales and briefly summarizes the validity studies which are in progress.