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American parents have a myriad of choices when it comes to educating their children, and these choices begin in the very beginning stages of children’s educational journey. Where parents decide to have their child spend their early formative years can have far-reaching implications for that child’s future. The focus of this research was to examine if a difference exists in kindergarten readiness preparation offered by Voluntary Prekindergarten (VPK) providers in the state of Florida. The VPK Provider Kindergarten Readiness Rates of public schools were compared to the VPK Provider Kindergarten Readiness Rates of private learning centers and, more specifically, of Seventh-day Adventist private learning centers. Furthermore, this study was conducted to examine whether a difference exists in the kindergarten readiness between VPK providers in urban and rural counties. This quantitative, non-experimental, causal comparative study explored the Kindergarten Readiness Rates of each of the 5,636 public and private VPK providers in the state of Florida. The Florida Kindergarten Readiness Screener was used to assess the kindergarten readiness level of each student. Individual student scores were tracked to the VPK provider that the students attended in order to assign a Readiness Rate for each provider. This screener consisted of the Early Childhood Observation SystemTM (ECHOSTM) and the Florida Assessments for Instruction in Reading (FAIR). A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was utilized to examine significant differences between public school, private, and Seventh-day Adventist providers. The ANOVA was followed by a Scheffe post-hoc test to determine where differences iv occurred. The findings revealed that there existed a statistically significant difference in the means of public school and private VPK providers. Public school providers were found to have achieved higher Provider Kindergarten Readiness Rates than private providers. It was also found that though Seventh-day Adventist providers had a slightly lower average Provider Kindergarten Readiness Rate than public school providers and a slightly higher average than other private providers, this difference was not statistically significant. A two-way factorial ANOVA was performed to examine if significant differences existed in the average Provider Kindergarten Readiness Rate when considering both the type of community (urban or rural) where the provider was located and the type of provider (public or private). The findings indicated that there was no statistically significant difference in Provider Readiness Rate when examining the interaction between the provider type and community type.

This dissertation concerns Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti (SKP) [the Swedish Communist Party] – in 1967 renamed Vänsterpartiet kommunisterna (VPK) [the Left Party – the Communists] and in 1990 renamed Vänsterpartiet (V) [the Left Party] – and the Party's process of coming to terms with history and its communist legacy. The aim of the study is to describe and analyse the SKP/VPK/V's process of coming to terms with history for the period 1956-2006, and to set out and problematise the driving forces and constraining mechanisms of this process. The theoretical framework of the study consists of Gunnar Sjöblom’s theory about party strategies of political parties in multi-party systems and Michael Freeden’s conceptual approach to ideology analysis.      During the period of study the SKP/VPK/V has, like no other political party in Sweden, been ascribed historical guilt regarding its own party history but also regarding the effects of world communism. The Party has thus found itself in a situation where it has had history as an adversary. The process of coming to terms with history has mainly revolved around three issues: independence (1956-1977), international ties (1977-1989) and a broadening beyond the communist tradition (1986-2006). The internal debate within the Party has linked these issues to calls for change aimed at ridding the party of what is considered undesirable elements of the Communist legacy. By analysing the arguments pursued in favour of these calls, it is possible to pick out a number of the driving forces behind the Party's process of coming to terms with history, namely an ambition to obtain vote maximisation, programme realisation and maximisation of parliamentary influence. The urge to distance the Party from certain aspects of its communist past has thus been related to fundamental goals that political parties in multi-party systems seek to obtain.      The results of the dissertation show that it is possible to pick out five main constraining mechanisms in the Party's process of coming to terms with history. 1) The safeguarding of Party cohesion. 2) The safeguarding of the distinctive character of the Party.  3) The need to resist external pressure. 4) The desire to avoid unfair apportioning of blame. 5) The safeguarding of the right to define the substance of one's own ideology. The existence of these constraining mechanisms help to explain why the process of coming to terms with history lingered on for several decades, and also why it seems to have been a process of such complexity for the Swedish Communist and Post-Communist Party.