DUBUQUE, Iowa (AP) - Justina Reisch knew early on that she wanted her children to start their education as soon as possible.
The Dubuque mother of four grew up on the East Coast and did not have the same early-education resources now available to her children. Looking back, she realizes that she was not as prepared for her early school years as she could have been.
So she decided to enroll her children in a community preschool offering when each was 3 years old. When they were 4, she sent them to Eisenhower Elementary School in Dubuque, which provides free schooling through Iowa’s Statewide Voluntary Preschool Program.
“I wanted my kids to have confidence to know that they were doing well,” Reisch told the Telegraph Herald. She now has had three children attend the preschool program at Eisenhower.
The Dubuque Community School District is beginning to chart a course to help more local children start kindergarten ready to learn, as measured by proficiency on early reading assessments.
District officials say they still are determining the action they will take in the coming years to improve kindergarten readiness, which can help prepare students for the rest of their educational careers.
However, local educators and early childhood workers said there are areas that the schools and community can start to address.
“There’s definitely success of coming in with very little and leaving with a lot and ready to go, but without a doubt, your kindergarten, first- and second-grade years are fundamental, and if it doesn’t happen there, it’s very hard to go back,” said Brandi Moeggenberg, a kindergarten teacher at Marshall Elementary School in Dubuque.
In the fall of 2017, 46 percent of new kindergartners in the Dubuque public schools met benchmarks on the Formative Assessment System for Teachers, or FAST, reading assessment.
Under the district’s new strategic plan, officials want to raise that number to 65 percent by 2023.
In setting the goal, district leaders recognize that children’s education at every level of schooling impacts their ability to eventually graduate and become productive citizens, said Cindy Steffens, the district’s director of elementary education.
One area of focus for the Dubuque Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, which focuses on third-grade literacy, is school readiness, Steffens said. Children who are not proficient in reading by the time they finish third grade are four times more likely to not graduate from high school on time than those who were proficient, according to a 2012 report from The Annie E. Casey Foundation.
“Really, every level has an impact on that graduation and being productive citizens and that mission that we have,” Steffens said.
The percent of Dubuque kindergartners meeting FAST benchmarks falls below the statewide rate and those of other local districts. Dubuque’s numbers fall in line with some other large districts, however.
In the fall of 2017, 69 percent of Iowa kindergartners met beginning reading benchmarks, according to a state legislative report.
Of 12 local public school districts and one private school system that provided fall 2017 early reading assessment data to the Telegraph Herald, Dubuque had the lowest percentage of students meeting the benchmark.
Holy Family Catholic Schools had the highest, at 97 percent.
Among large districts, Dubuque’s FAST data is close to that of Waterloo Community Schools, where 46.5 percent of new kindergartners met FAST benchmarks last fall, and Council Bluffs Community Schools, which had 49.6 percent.
In Iowa City Community School District, however, that number was 72.01 percent.
Dubuque school officials are examining what they can do to improve the numbers. Steffens said they are working to identify what barriers exist to helping children be ready for kindergarten.
School staff and community organizations will be able to help determine where those gaps are, she said. She anticipates the district will examine topics such as preschool attendance, staff development and community partnerships.
She noted that there are other aspects of kindergarten readiness in addition to literacy, such as following directions, sharing and following a routine.
“That impacts all areas, when you think about it. That impacts math. It impacts reading,” Steffens said.
It is typical for Moeggenberg to see incoming kindergartners with a broad range of skills at Marshall Elementary.
“We have kids that are really ready to jump right in and get going,” she said. She added, “Then, we have kids that can’t write their name, that can’t recognize their name, that really don’t have those basic skills of a book.”
Teachers often can help catch up young children who start school behind their peers, but it helps when they come to school ready to learn so they can start working on skills they need to meet grade-level goals, Moeggenberg said.
“Obviously, we’re going to review some preschool skills at the beginning of the year anyway, just to fine-tune,” she said. “But it’s nice if we’re just fine-tuning as opposed to teaching from the beginning.”
Kimberly Villotti, an administrative consultant for early childhood for Iowa Department of Education, said state officials want kindergartners starting school to have “lots and lots of language.”
The more that young children hear different sounds, the more likely they are to recognize and remember them, she said. However, that window closes at about 8 or 9 years old.
“We really need to expose young kids to that language through oral conversation and oral opportunities because we’re training their brain to hear those (sounds),” Villotti said.
Research also indicates that early learning experiences impact children.
A 2012 study conducted by nonprofit research organization Child Trends and funded by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that strong school readiness was associated with higher performance later in school both academically and behaviorally.
In a 2017 Brookings Institution report, a panel of social scientists wrote that “convincing evidence shows that children attending a diverse array of state and school district pre-K programs are more ready for school at the end of their pre-K year than children who did not attend pre-K.”
However, they cautioned that large-scale evidence of pre-kindergarten’s long-term academic effects remains sparse and that it is too early to draw broad conclusions.
According to Dubuque Community Schools data, 756 children were in 4-year-old preschool programs in district schools or partner community preschools this fall.
Nancy Murphy, the district’s early childhood coordinator, said there are typically about 900 preschool-eligible students each year in the school district’s boundaries.
Dubuque County Early Childhood’s annual kindergarten survey found that 96 percent of kindergartners in the 2016-2017 school year had some kind of preschool experience.
Dubuque Community School District offers free preschool to 4-year-olds via programming in district buildings and in community partner preschools.
Children with special needs also are entitled to home-based services before they turn 3 and to school-based services after that, Murphy said.
Parents of other children who are not yet 4 can pay tuition to send their children to preschool.
In the community, programs such as local child care providers, Parents as Teachers, Head Start and local libraries provide resources for early development and learning.
Still, local educators and organizations said there are needs to be met for Dubuque’s young children.
According to Dubuque County Early Childhood’s Community Plan, which was updated in June, local entities reported early child care and education needs such as quality child care, the involvement of parents in schools and support for transitions between early childhood and K-12 schooling.
Parents surveyed were asked what services they wished were available to children. Their top pick was free or low-cost social activities for young children, followed by affordable before- and after-school care for preschoolers and elementary-aged children.
Sherri Edwards, director of Dubuque County Early Childhood, said one struggle in reaching local young children is capacity.
For example, Dubuque County Early Childhood uses some of its funding to contract with Four Oaks for Parents as Teachers, which provides home visits for families of young children.
But for families seeking to get into the program, the waiting list can stretch on for a year or more, Edwards said. With more funding, officials could expand services and staff.
“Being able to actively promote the program and promote recruiting would be amazing because we know that we’re turning families away,” Edwards said.
Additionally, many child care centers and in-home providers are full, and those that have demonstrated increasing quality often have a waiting list, she said.
“If they wait until after the child is born, they may not be able to get a space for quite a while,” she said.
Those providers address children’s health needs, offer stimulating play activities and offer best-practice curriculum to ensure that children are learning and growing so they can start kindergarten without needing a lot of interventions, Edwards said.
Another difficulty cited by educators and providers was transportation.
Shannon Wrobleski, a preschool teacher at Table Mound Elementary School in Dubuque, said many of her preschool parents work and are not able to drop their children off and pick them up from half-day preschool.
Expanding transportation access through busing or offering more types of programming could help with that, she said.
Tara Roddick, Dubuque County child care consultant supervisor at Iowa Child Care Resource and Referral, said factors such as transportation can make it difficult to get children to early childhood or preschool experiences.
“I think it’s a question to bring transportation providers to the table and say, ’What do we do?’” Roddick said.
Edwards also sees that finding the families with the greatest need and keeping them engaged in preschool programs isn’t always easy.
“Sometimes, the issues that the family faces makes it difficult to keep them going and growing and participating,” she said.
However, service providers in Dubuque who work with young children help families access the services they need, Edwards said.
Other educators and providers see varying needs when it comes to reaching families and children to help them build early learning opportunities.
Community resources such as those at Carnegie-Stout Public Library can help bridge gaps by reaching parents who don’t send their children to day care or preschool, said Danielle Day, library youth services manager.
However, Day said she would like to see more efforts to get the word out to parents regarding the skills that children should have when they start kindergarten. She said she feels that many families might not have that information.
Other factors such as poverty or the education levels of families can play a role in kindergarten readiness, Moeggenberg said.
Though her students’ families work hard, a lack of resources can impact many areas of their lives, including education, she said.
Murphy said providers need to learn more about child mental health and how to work with students who have experienced trauma.
For Moeggenberg, one of the biggest obstacles for students is motivation.
If children are excited and motivated to do well in school, she can help catch up the students who come into kindergarten behind their peers.
The key is for students to come to school with the belief that it is important and that it can unlock doors in the future, and that they believe in themselves as learners, she said.
“The rest you can provide for them, but that is not something you can provide in the classroom,” Moeggenberg said. “They have to be intrinsically motivated.”
Katherine Varela believes that enrolling her children in pre-K was key to helping them be ready to start kindergarten.
Varela, of Dubuque, has sent two of her children so far to 4-year-old pre-K at Holy Ghost Elementary School in Dubuque. Those two children are now in second grade and kindergarten.
Varela said once her children got into a preschool program, they learned skills she might otherwise not have known to teach them.
With the help of preschool classes, Varela’s children were ready when they started kindergarten, she said.
“Had they not had pre-K, I think they would have started behind,” she said.
While local educators say early childhood education and learning is important for children, they can help students succeed even while their skills may vary.
“The more exposure to those foundational skills, the better … but we are excited to have them all,” Moeggenberg said. “They’re all our students, and we work hard to make sure that every single one of them meets their goals.”
Even so, educators say that when it comes to teaching young children, balancing academics and play is important.
Tina Pothoff, early childhood director at St. Anthony Elementary and Our Lady of Guadalupe Spanish Immersion Program in Dubuque, said preschool teachers make sure that each day includes some small group instruction but also chances to play in learning centers.
“They think they’re playing, but they’re learning through their play, and that’s what’s important, is that they learn through their play because kids still have to be kids,” she said.
___
Information from: Telegraph Herald, http://www.thonline.com
Please read our comment policy before commenting.