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About one in three Akron students begin kindergarten without a basic framework of skills. But local programs are showing parents how to be their child's best teacher.
By John Higgins
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Saturday, Jun 21, 2008
The Kindergarten Readiness Assessment-Literacy (KRA-L) tests given to incoming kindergartners every fall since 2004 measure a child's ability to comprehend and process oral language and identify letters, rhymes and sounds.
The KRA-L is a guide to help teachers and parents tailor instruction to each child's experience. It's not a high-stakes admittance test to kindergarten, but that doesn't mean the stakes aren't high.
Children who haven't developed a basic framework for learning by the time they enter kindergarten start out behind their better-prepared classmates and tend to fall further and further behind with each grade, educators say.
Akron's score is not unusual for urban districts with large populations living in poverty. Canton also had about 30 percent scoring in the lowest range. Cincinnati had 32 percent. Toledo had nearly 38 percent. In Cleveland, 45 percent of incoming kindergartners score in the lowest tier.
Children entering kindergarten in relatively wealthy school districts generally begin their public education much better prepared than those in poorer districts.
For example, just 3.75 percent of incoming kindergartners in the Revere school district, which includes affluent Bath Township, scored in the lowest range last fall. Two-thirds of Revere's new kindergartners scored in the top tier.
''Family wealth is the No. 1 indicator at looking at achievement on every level,'' said Judythe A. Hummel, executive director of Summit Education Initiative, an alliance of community leaders dedicated to improving education in Summit County.
In the last year or so, Summit Education Initiative and several
area organizations and agencies have worked together to help parents in poverty better prepare their children for kindergarten.
Many of those efforts — which include playgroups, home visits and new, affordable preschools — are under way in the University of Akron neighborhood and Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority homes.
Group imports program
The University Park Alliance represents a 50-block area surrounding the University of Akron, a highly transient neighborhood.
The organization received a $1.08 million grant from the GAR Foundation to import a successful home visitation program for 4-year-olds from Stark County and start three affordable preschools.
The visitation program has been under way since March and the first of three new preschools opens this fall.
Only 10 percent of incoming kindergartners at Leggett and Mason have attended preschool, Hummel said. In 2006, the KRA-L scores for those entering Leggett showed about 40 percent scoring in the lowest tier. At Mason, it was 47 percent.
The University Park Alliance hopes the new program will improve those numbers.
Supporting Partnerships to Assure Ready Kids (SPARK) is a national program funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to improve kindergarten readiness by building reading, language and social skills.
Stark County was one of eight sites in the country selected for the initiative. Sisters of Charity Foundation of Canton operates the program in Canton, Minerva and more recently, Alliance, for children ages 3 to 6.
Trained ''parent partners'' visit families in their homes eight to 12 times a year and show them effective ways to build basic literacy skills. Kids get free books and other learning materials as well as their school supplies for kindergarten.
The parent partners also organize group visits to the library and to their schools, a few days before kindergarten begins, to help children make the transition.
''If nothing else, we have far less criers the first day,'' said Joni Close, senior program director at Sisters of Charity Foundation of Canton.
''We'd love them to be in the program for two years as a 3-year-old and a 4-year-old,'' Close said.
The five-year program would have ended last month, but organizers have secured additional funding to keep it going.
Impressive results
The results in KRA-L scores are significant, according to Peter J. Leahy, senior research associate at the University of Akron's Institute for Health and Social Policy.
He has been tracking the progress of children in the SPARK program since the first group entered kindergarten in 2005.
He compares SPARK children with non-SPARK children in the same classrooms and similar socioeconomic backgrounds. Kids in SPARK over the three years have scored an average of nearly three points better on the 29-point test than non-SPARK kids, a significant improvement according to the Ohio Department of Education.
The first SPARK class will enter third grade this fall and Leahy is looking forward to seeing how they perform on their achievement tests.
Pre-kindergarten interventions in the past have shown initial boosts in performance, but the improvements tend to wash out by second or third grade, Leahy said.
SPARK organizers hope that by focusing on improving how parents interact with their kids, parents will be able to sustain their children's gains as they progress through school.
Income disparity
Researchers have long known that children do not all come to school equally ready to learn.
Betty Hart and Todd Risley documented the powerful influence that home environment has on shaping children's language skills in their 1995 book Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children.
They studied the home lives of 42 families in Kansas City, Kansas, representing different levels of income and found that children of higher income parents were exposed at an early age to more words than the children of poorer parents.
By age 4, the average child of professional parents would have accumulated experience with almost 45 million words. The average child of a welfare family would have 13 million words, according to an article Hart and Risley wrote in 2003 for American Educator about their research.
The quality of verbal interactions was also markedly different, with poorer children receiving less praise and encouragement from their parents than children of more affluent parents.
The disparity widened as kids went through school, with the ones who started behind adding new words at a slower pace than the better-off kids who started with a stronger foundation.
''We were awestruck at how well our measures of accomplishments at age 3 predicted measures of language skill at age 9-10,'' Hart and Risley wrote.
They conclude that ''cognitively, experience is sequential: Experiences in infancy establish habits of seeking, noticing, and incorporating new and more complex experiences, as well as schemas for categorizing and thinking about experiences.''
Building foundation
Akron's former assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, Sue Long, describes that framework as ''scaffolding.''
Kids who don't know their colors, shapes, letters or even which end of a book is up when they enter kindergarten don't have a scaffold to support new learning.
''They don't have anything to hang it on,'' said Long, who retired last December and is now working for Summit Education Initiative.
That scaffolding begins at birth, and a program called ''Born Learning'' offered through United Way tells parents how to build that knowledge.
Born Learning has provided a range of tip sheets, helpful hints and even videos from Oprah Winfrey and Maya Angelou to help parents turn everyday experiences such as doing the laundry into learning opportunities.
Last year, the AMHA developed the ''Born Learning'' materials into a curriculum for a series of eight playgroup sessions for housing residents.
This year, the housing authority is offering playgroups at Honey Locust, Colonial Hills, Summit Lake, Valley View, Maplewood and Joy Park.
''We've got 3,000 kids between zero and 4 at AMHA housing,'' said Christine Yuhasz, the agency's community relations director. ''We have a real opportunity to really test this thing and make it fly. And certainly our kids are at risk more often of not doing well.''
Getting parents involved
Week One focuses on how to establish meal, bath and bed routines. Week Two looks at how to make chores a learning experience (imagine overturning a laundry basket of socks and challenging children to match them by color). Week Six talks about using a grocery store trip to talk about colors, shapes and foods.
''This is where you get the parents' attention,'' Yuhasz said. ''You bring them in a room and you show them how easy it is to teach their kids stuff, how everyday there are just opportunities to learn regardless of their own education.''
Yuhasz sees the eight-week course as an appetizer to get parents interested in other programs.
''So when they get done with Born Learning and parents are excited about teaching their kids, we can link them into something that's more lasting,'' she said.
Here are some area resources for pre-kindergarten education
Born Learning: A program through the United Way that offers ways for parents to interact with their children and turn everyday experiences into learning opportunities. Find downloadable materials online at http://www.uwsummit.org/bomlearning/index.htm.
SPARK Ohio: Learn more about Stark County's innovative home visit program at http://www.sparkohio.com/
Childcare Connections (Infoline): Call for general information and consultations on choosing preschools, day cares and other pre-kindergarten education options. Serves Summit, Stark, Medina, Portage, Trumbull and Mahoning counties. Call 330-376-7706 or 800-407-5437.
Help Me Grow: Parents in Summit County who are pregnant or have a child up to age 3 may qualify for home visits from a registered nurse to assess needs and link parents with resources. Call 339-376-7273 to check for eligibility.
John Higgins can be reached at 330-996-3792 or jhiggins@thebeaconjournal.com.
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