As a kindergarten teacher, I collect a lot of data from within my classroom which demonstrates that students who attended a pre-kindergarten (or a high-quality early learning program) came into kindergarten with far more skills than their peers. These skills range from academic to social emotional skills. However, I have been wondering if there is more broad research to support what I see everyday. Additionally, I was saddened to see an article in the Baltimore Sun, which explained that across Maryland, in the 2016-2017 school year, only 43% of kindergarten students were considered “ready for school” by the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (KRA) (Bowie, 2016). In Baltimore, the data is even more saddening. In Baltimore, only 38% of students “were considered ready for school” (Bowie, 2016). The KRA assessment is conducted one-on-one with a teacher and assesses each student’s early literacy, math, social foundations, and physical well-being skills. The KRA assessment has 50 items of data which a teacher must collect about each child. To see that only 38% of students in Baltimore City are considered “ready,” shows a huge gap already in the skills of our youngest incoming students.
To understand how this readiness (or lack of) affects learning in school, I sought out some longer range data to explain the impact. In April 2017, The Washington Post presented a summary article of a much broader study called: “What do we really know about the value of prekindergarten?” (Strauss, 2017). The larger study was conducted by a group of scientists to examine “evidence on the impact of state-funded prekindergarten programs” (Strauss, 2017). In the Washington Post article there is a link to the entire text of the study, which seeks to unpack and examine larger questions such as, “How can scale-up be improved? Should pre-K be targeted or universal?” (Strauss, 2017). Check the link below to read more.
To summarize, the study found, “the uniformly positive evidence of impact on kindergarten readiness, and the nascent body of ongoing inquiry about long-term impacts lead us to conclude that continued implementation of scaled-up pre-K programs is in order”(Strauss, 2017). The research acknowledges the struggle to measure long term impact of pre-kindergarten on student success later in life. It is challenging to keep track of students for long periods of time and to account for the other factors in a student’s life, which affect their learning (Strauss, 2017).
As Baltimore City grapples with its own questions of how to fund and address early learning needs of the students within our city, this report offers substantial argument that the Kirwan Commission (and other funding sources) should consider the importance of the quality pre-kindergarten experiences for the lives of our students and the health our city.
References
Bowie, L. (2016, December 05). Less than half of Maryland kindergartners ready for school. Retrieved November 15, 2017, from
Strauss, V. (2017, April 24). Analysis | What do we really know about the value of
prekindergarten? Retrieved November 12, 2017, from
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/04/24/what-do-we-really-know-about-the-value-of-pre-kindergarten/?utm_term=.5ac63a3ef76c
1 comment:
I'd love to know more about the differences in pre-kindergarten programs across the state and country and how they prepare students for kindergarten differently. Also, how have the metrics to determine a pre-kindergartener's "readiness" changed over the years? It has often been argued that the new era of high stakes testing does little to demonstrate students' true abilities and that the accountability measures in place for teachers have negative impacts on the quality of instruction and I wonder if the same is true for pre-kindergarten.
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