Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/669874
LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 5.16 35 readiness, a term that bubbled up publicly about four years ago when JCPS started assessing readiness in the frst six weeks of school and publishing the data. Bleak numbers caught headlines — 34.6 percent of kindergartners were deemed ready in the 2012-2013 school year. Te following year: 52.3 percent. Last year: 47.9 percent. "I've gotten a lot of questions since it's been posted in the newspaper. I remember a couple years ago when it frst came out, my father-in-law called me and said, 'Hey, did you know that these kids aren't ready for kindergarten?'" Gray says, chuckling at the memory. "Yes, I know very well." Te good thing about bad attention is it's still attention. Priorities shift. People, parents and bureaucrats start to talk. A charge: Let's get these kids up to speed! So much to do. And not just the academic skills, like identifying uppercase from lowercase letters and colors. Let's tie your shoes, zip your pants. Yes, pouting is a form of communication, but how about talking through a solution? Make eye contact when speaking. When's your birthday? What's your address? Share your stuf, please. Draw a triangle. A rectangle. One more thing — please don't lose that wonder, that wide imagination that sees a treasure when given an empty tissue box. Creativity is critical too. Welcome to kindergarten. Who's ready to learn? A gentle breeze soothes room 118 on an unseasonably cool August day. It's just after 2:30 in the afternoon, and 23 students scatter into learning stations as Gray sits at a semicircular table to assess the kindergarten readiness of a boy whose gelled brown hair forms a slick swoop. "When's your birthday?" Gray asks, quietly. "A way long time," he replies. "Your address?" "Ah, uh, no." It's Gray's second screening of the day. Tis morning's went pretty well. Te chubby-cheeked girl who's not even fve yet expertly sang her ABCs but fumbled counting — 15,16,18 — and the triangle she drew looked more like an amoeba. Like all kindergarten teachers in Kentucky, Gray uses the BRIGANCE screening, a roughly 15-minute test that covers everything from how to read a book to a child's ability to balance on one leg. While other states, particularly in the Northeast, have been screening kindergarten readiness for decades, Kentucky is new at this, having mandated the assessment statewide in 2013. Kathleen Cooter, a professor of early-childhood and special education at Bellarmine University, says that before 2013, individual districts were gauging readiness in a silo. She calls BRIGANCE a "powerful assistant," a uniform way for teachers, administrators and parents to gather exactly what kids know when they walk through the door. But news coverage of poor JCPS readiness scores has relayed more of a doomy feel than benefcial vibe. "It's an overreaction — like the kids have failed a grade or got kicked out of high school. It's not part of the accountability monolith," Cooter says. In fact, in a few months Gray will learn from the Kentucky Department of Education that less than half of the kids in her classroom (and 44 percent of all Kerrick kindergartners) are classifed as ready, a fgure she will react to with a shrug. Te kids who didn't earn that label may have only missed fairly minor things, perhaps not being able to count past 20 or correctly point to their elbow or recall their address. Give Gray a few weeks, they'll be on track. It's the students who have no concept of higher-order tasks, like classifying colors or handing over one of something. Tose are the ones who need signifcant catching up. So she pounces into action. (She's the real deal — nationally board certifed, the highest professional standard in teaching.) Repetition wafts from room 118 daily: "A! Apple! B! Book. C! Cat!" Song echoes in the hallway too, like a rif on the Addams Family tune: Days of the week. (Clap clap!) Days of the week. (Clap clap!) Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…. In the beginning of the school year, Gray breaks down the basics, cutting sentences on paper apart into individual words. Put the sentence back in order! ("I see red bird a?" she asks after a child takes a turn at the front of the class. "No!" students roar back in laughter.) Play-Doh, magnets, markers, worksheets, videos — Gray has an arsenal of tricks to build skill after skill. A poster reminds kids to read left to right. A popsicle stick or index fnger creates spaces needed between words when writing. She hammers away at recognizable "chunks" — it, or, op — hidden in words that at frst may seem overwhelming. But she's just one person. And at 3:45 every day, 24 little ones head home. Tese next few sentences will surprise nobody: Kids from wealthier zip codes test higher for kindergarten readiness than their poorer counterparts. Example: Te St. Matthews/Jefersontown zip of 40023 — 88 percent of kids screen as kindergarten ready. In some west and south Louisville zip codes, the percentage ranges from 27 to 36. Cooter, the Bellarmine professor, is quick to pause here. All families, she says, no matter their income, most likely want their children to succeed. But parents juggling low wages, multiple jobs and other stressors might not have the time to investigate what kindergarten readiness means. Nor do they probably have the money to enroll toddlers in top-notch facilities. "High-quality childcare is one of the highest costs for parents, so when you don't have money, you end up putting them into childcare settings that may be less stimulating, maybe much more TV time, maybe far less interaction that's not conducive to brain growth," Cooter says. "You know, 95 percent of the brain is in place by the time the kids walk into kindergarten, so those are critical periods for growth and knowledge." Tat's why the federal program Head Start and state-funded preschool are such valuable options, Cooter adds. Tis year JCPS has about 4,000 three- and four- year-olds enrolled in these early-childhood programs. (JCPS estimates that, to meet the needs of all income-eligible three- and four-year-olds, they should serve as many as 5,800 children.) Nearly all (98 percent) While other states, particularly in the Northeast, have been screening kindergarten readiness for decades, Kentucky is new at this, having mandated the assessment statewide in 2013. The goal: a uniform way for teachers, administrators and parents to gather exactly what kids know when they walk through the door.