Wednesday, August 12, 2020

PLAYING CATCH UP

Written by Don Coberly. RISE/TVEP Executive Director
During Governor Little's Task Force meetings last fall session,  Idaho legislator Mr. Gary Marshall sounded a warning to his colleagues with regard to kindergarten readiness. 
“Over the summer I’ve heard a lot of talk about how 60 percent of kids are not ready for kindergarten,” Marshall said. “I would hope we could change that message and get back to a different concept and that is, I believe absolutely every child is ready for kindergarten.”If you look at the long-term implications of that, then you’re pretty sure 60 percent of kids aren’t ready to be 4-year-olds or be in pre-k and it just keeps going on down,” Marshall said. “The real answer is all kids are ready for kindergarten. We have to take them where they are at and do our very best.”
According to Idaho Red News reporter Clark Corbin, Marshall was obviously trying to be positive and point out that educators need to teach and help all students, regardless of the reading skills they possess when they show up to school.
Then, during two days of informational meetings in November at the Statehouse, Rep. Gayann DeMordaunt, R-Eagle, asked state officials why she kept hearing news reports saying students were unprepared for kindergarten, and questioned whether the narrative “was just anecdotal.”
Well, teachers do take their students where they are and do their best, and the information in not at all anecdotal. The problem is that there are high poverty schools across the state where very low percentages of students enter school ready to read, and there are others with low percentages of poverty where many more kids start out ready. 
And many kids in those high poverty schools never catch up.
Let's take a look at what the data say about this phenomenon.
In order to assess preparation for reading, we use the % at Grade Level on the Fall Kindergarten Idaho Reading Indicator. You may be surprised at how much variance there is among preparedness levels across the state of Idaho.
Highest Percentage of Kindergartners "Ready to Read"
The charts below show some of the schools with the highest percentage of "ready to read" kindergartners, and the demographics of those schools. Data for some schools were not available, or were given within a range, because their kindergarten enrollments are very low.

These schools consistently have high percentages of students showing up for kindergarten "ready to read", as judged by the Fall kindergarten Idaho Reading Indicator. Note that these are not cohort data, so  student mobility is not considered. Also note that percentages are generally lower for the "new IRI" initiated in 2018.
To see an illustration of how mobility works in high poverty and low poverty schools, see this post from the Boise School District's Data Points blog, written in 2017. It's interesting, and a bit startling to see the mobility differences.
The red and green text columns are meant to show kindergarten percentage (for example, fall 2012), and Spring third grade percentage (for example, Spring 2016). So Riverside School, in Boise, had 91% prepared in Fall kindergarten and 91% prepared in Spring 3rd grade. The State of Idaho, by way of comparison, had 56% in Fall kindergarten and 73% 4 years later.


This slide shows the demographics for the schools in the first slide. Note that each of the schools has Free/Reduced Lunch percentages well below the Idaho total, and Limited English percentages below the state percentage, as well.

Lowest Percentage of Kindergartners "Ready to Read"

In the charts below, you'll see schools that have some of the lowest longitudinal percentages of students that are "ready to read" upon entering kindergarten. 

Note that while the schools in the "highest" category begin kindergarten with "ready to read percentages in the 70's, 80's, or 90's, these schools typically start out in the 20's and 30's, and, more recently with the new IRI, between 10% and 26% "ready to read".

These schools make tremendous progress with their kindergartners as they progress through the early grades. For example, just 31% of kindergartners at Horizon Elementary in Jerome  were "ready to read" in Fall, 2013. Four years later, 72% were at grade level at the end of 3rd grade. That's impressive, but note that none of the "lowest" schools get to the performance level of the "highest" schools noted above. 

The demographics of these schools are quite different than those in the "highest" category. All have far higher percentages of free/reduced lunch than the state, as well as very high percentages of English learners. 

Since the introduction of the new IRI in 2018, the percentage of students "ready to read" has been about 10% lower statewide in Idaho. So the number of schools with between 10% and 30% has increased substantially. Below is a chart showing those schools for the administration of the Fall, 2019 kindergarten IRI.

With very few exceptions, these schools have very high poverty rates and high Limited English populations. The average percent ready to read across these schools was 16% in Fall, 2019.

How Pre-k Could Help

There are 19 schools in the list above. As we noted, they average 16% "ready to read" when the students enter school for kindergarten. A high quality Pre-k program could change the future for many students in those schools.

How? Well,  think about this. Let's say that each of these schools implemented quality Pre-k programs for their 4-year olds. in Fall, 2019, there were 1300 kindergartners in those schools, and 210 of them were at grade level. 1090 were not.

If those 19 Pre-k programs were able to get the percentage of "ready to read" kindergartners to the state average of 42%, 546 of 1300 students would be ready. That's 346 more students than were ready in fall, 2019.

If 70% were "ready to read" after participating in Pre-k programs, then 910 of 1310 would be ready. That's 700 more than in fall, 2019.

This can be done. We can raise the level of readiness in our kindergartens, starting with the schools that need it the most. The benefits this would provide for our businesses, our communities, our families, and our schools would be substantial. It's time we got to work on providing these opportunities for reading readiness.











PLAYING CATCH UP

Written by Don Coberly. RISE/TVEP Executive Director During Governor Little's Task Force meetings last fall session,  Idaho legislato...