Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2007 > December > 17 > Entry
New kindergarten test shows readiness concerns
By Scott Elliott
Dayton Daily News
A new statewide test designed to check if kids are ready to start school shows many in the greater Miami Valley will need help to succeed in kindergarten.
For nearly all area school districts at least one in 10 incoming kindergarteners this year scored low enough on the readiness test that the state deems them in need of intervention. Only a small sliver of the 82 districts in the 10 counties surrounding Dayton had fewer low scoring kids.
A Dayton Daily News study of the data shows a strong link between kindergarten readiness and overall district test performance — the better prepared a community’s incoming kindergarteners are the more likely that district will rate high on its state report card.
Consider Oakwood, consistently among the highest rated area districts. Just 2.7 percent of 147 Oakwood’s 2006 incoming kindergarteners scored low enough to require intervention.
Meanwhile in Dayton, one of the state’s worst-rated districts, 40 percent need immediate intervention, the test showed. That’s among the highest percentages in Ohio. And none of those children had set foot in a district school when they were assessed.
Oakwood is one of Ohio’s wealthiest districts while Dayton is among the poorest. The Daily News study of Ohio corroborated other research showing strong links among income, kindergarten readiness and test performance.
“We have some challenges that make it more difficult for us,” said Dayton school board President Yvonne Isaacs.
Many studies have shown that kids from wealthier families come to kindergarten more ready to learn.
But to W. Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, that is part of the proof that communities can have a big impact by investing in pre-schools.
“You have to make them intentionally educational programs rather than thinking of them as primarily a service so parents can work,” he said.
Even in a high poverty area, kids can be ready to start school.
“You have to have a quality, intensive pre-school program to do that,” Barnett said.
In Montgomery County, where a state readiness exam found at least one in five incoming kindergarteners need immediate intervention to succeed in school, an effort is under way to raise the quality of early childhood care.
The effort seeks, first of all, to create a structure for drawing grants to help the county receive more federal aid.
Secondly, that money will be spent to provide technical support to early childhood programs, to rate child care centers and to help them make good pre-school choices.
“There is an incredible opportunity in Montgomery County to provide enriching experiences during a time when children are developing 90 percent of their brains,” said Jenni Roer, executive director of the Tait Foundation, a local organization funding youth development initiatives.
To that end, a unique partnership was formed — the Montgomery County Early Care and Education Initiative. Karen Lampe, a pre-school operator and the former president of the Ohio Association of Child Care Providers, has been hired as a consultant to lead the initiatives efforts.
That includes hiring two technical assistant to work with 250 local day care centers and pre-schools to help them earn new state quality ratings.
The initiative will work in tandem with Edvention, a partnership announced earlier this year to bolster student skills in science, technology, engineering and math.
Lampe said there is between $2 million and $4 million state and federal dollars available that Montgomery County has not accessed because there were not effective structures and processes to connect those in need with the money.
“What we found here was providers were really struggling to connect with those resources,” she said. “They did not have enough support locally to get to the higher quality level and to connect the dots.”
The initiative’s goals include offering training for early childhood workers, creating a standard documents that pre-school teachers can fill out to share information with kindergarten teachers and a pilot program to help centers earn state quality ratings.
Ohio is moving toward a three-star quality rating system for pre-schools and day care centers. The initiative’s technical assistants will advise centers as they seek to qualify for those star ratings and may provide mini-grants or services to help them overcome barriers to earning the stars.
“These are specialists who will meet with them and help them with whatever their needs are,” Lampe said. “We really can help them where they are.”
The county’s Families and Children First Council and the Tait Foundation contributed nearly $500,000 to fund Lampe’s position, the technical assistants, mini grants and collaboration with Edvention over the next 16 months. By comparison, the 10-county region that includes the Dayton area has just two state-assigned technical assistants to work with child care providers.
“By having higher quality experience from birth through age five, that will enable them to be more kindergarten ready,” she said.
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