The summer is here, and many of Connecticut’s preschool programs have wrapped up for the year. In just two months, a new class of children will be starting kindergarten. Although educators agree that it is important for children to enter kindergarten ready to learn, there is less consensus on the details. What does it mean for a child to be ready for kindergarten and who decides? ECE stakeholders in all three PEER communities and across Connecticut are asking this question, which is also reflected in PEER’s collaborative research agenda.
One of the ways the state has defined what children should know and be able to do from birth to age 5 is through the Connecticut Early Learning and Development Standards (CT ELDS). The CT ELDS outline curriculum standards in eight domains: cognition, social and emotional development, physical development and health, language and literacy, mathematics, science, social studies, and creative arts. While the CT ELDS include a broad range of developmental domains, state and national K-12 standards focus primarily on traditional academic domains. This difference illuminates a gap in how early education systems and K-12 systems think about kindergarten readiness.
When the three PEER communities established their collective impact initiatives, Bridgeport Prospers, Norwalk ACTS, and Stamford Cradle to Career, all three of these communities identified kindergarten readiness as a key outcome area. Since then, these communities have been wrestling with how to define kindergarten readiness.
This spring, all three PEER communities have hosted discussions about kindergarten readiness. Bridgeport Prospers brought together a diverse group of community partners to discuss preschool access and how it relates to kindergarten readiness. Both Stamford and Norwalk brought preschool and kindergarten educators together to discuss how they define kindergarten readiness. In these discussions, educators identified a wide range of skills, including self-care skills, language skills, early math and literacy skills, the ability to separate from a parent, self-confidence, and a love of learning. In general, preschool and kindergarten teachers expressed substantially different ideas about what they think it means for a child to be ready to learn. Across all three communities, stakeholders agree that the academic expectations for kindergarten readiness are higher than ever before.
As these communities dig deeper into the topic of kindergarten readiness, PEER has joined the relevant workgroups (sometimes called Community Action Networks) that have been convened by Bridgeport Prospers, Norwalk ACTS and Stamford Cradle to Career. These workgroups are focusing on defining, measuring, and promoting children’s readiness for kindergarten, as well as the readiness of elementary schools for their youngest students. Sitting with these workgroups allows PEER to share its perspective and deepen its understanding of these communities and the organizations that serve their young children. PEER was created to produce actionable research that serves member communities. Moving forward, PEER hopes to identify projects that can support data-driven decision-making around kindergarten readiness as these communities pursue the goal of preparing all children to enter kindergarten ready to learn.