Children may be assessed for school readiness before entering kindergarten in Illinois.
A committee of administrators, teachers, university faculty and researchers presented a report to the Illinois State Board of Education last month recommending the creation of an evaluation process before children enter kindergarten to guide the professional development of teachers, inform decisions regarding resources such as class size and gauge the skills of schoolchildren in learning and interacting with others.
Most school districts do some of these assessments already but very few look at all the areas indicated in the report, so there is no consistent measure for child development until third grade, said Robin Steans, executive director of Advance Illinois, one of the groups that presented the report to the Board. These assessments will consist of teachers observing the children rather than issuing tests to be completed, she added.
“This will be a huge step forward in getting a much better picture much earlier on than what we currently do about how our kids are doing and what they need,” Steans said. “This isn’t intended as an accountability tool, for the states that have done it well, this is a professional development tool.”
The report describes the cases of states such as Colorado, Washington and Minnesota, where children entering kindergarten are assessed for school readiness. Waiting until third grade to gather information on how children are performing is too late because learning patterns have already taken place, said Arthur Reynolds, a professor of child development at the University of Minnesota who conducts research on the topic.
“It matters where kids are at starting school. It makes a big difference in their performance,” Reynolds said. “It’s also used as a guide to evaluate preschool experiences.”
Standard measures could also address achievement gaps in children, Reynolds said, citing a difference in third grade between children of different socioeconomic status. The gap already exists in kindergarten, so addressing the problem of school readiness could close gaps in performance by race and ethnicity or socioeconomic status, he said.
Teachers in Evanston already have to complete forms to gauge the development of children before kindergarten, including reading skills, ability to recognize pictures and symbols and interactions with peers, said YoonKyoung Park, a prekindergarten teacher at the Childcare Network of Evanston. While the actual forms used vary in different schools and among different teachers in private kindergartens, schools belonging to District 65 use the same assessments, she said.
The recommended assessments are similar to those currently in place at Evanston/Skokie School District 65, so the proposed assessments should not bring much change, said Ellen Fogelberg, director of literacy and early childhood at District 65. All teachers in the district already use various tests and benchmarks to do social, emotional, academic, physical and behavioral assessments on schoolchildren before, during and after kindergarten, she said.
“I’m fairly confident that we will be fine because we have such a comprehensive system,” Fogelberg said. “Our teachers are used to doing assessments and looking at data and using it effectively for planning purposes, for diagnostic purposes and to document student growth.”
