Marie Sell of Memphis City Schools and Doug Imig of University of Memphis have written a brief that all of us should read, especially in light of the ongoing discussion about public education in Memphis:

In Memphis, Children Arrive at School with Meaningful Differences in School Readiness

Across the country, children from more affluent families are more likely to be ready for school when they reach kindergarten. This relationship matters for Memphis, where most school-children come from low-income families and neighborhoods. It also matters because when children are ready for kindergarten they are more likely to continue to do well through school, graduate, and go on to college. In a sense, we gain a glimpse of the community we will become when we see how well prepared our children are when they reach kindergarten.

To evaluate school readiness, Memphis City Schools uses a screening tool called the Kindergarten Readiness Indicator (KRI). Results on the KRI suggest that while family income helps to explain patterns of readiness, the relationship between income and readiness is not fixed. Instead, many children in Memphis who grow up in poor families also reach school ready to learn.

HOW – AND WHY – DO WE MEASURE KINDERGARTEN READINESS?

Since the fall of 2006, Memphis City Schools (MCS) has used the KRI to provide teachers with a quick assessment of incoming students’ language and math skills. The KRI also tells us about the relative readiness of different cohorts of children – for example, children who attended a strong curriculum based program such as Head Start or Pre-Kindergarten. Results on the KRI also let us compare the readiness of groups of children over time. With this information, we have an opportunity to identify, promote, and expand early childhood experiences that support optimal early childhood brain development, leading to school readiness and academic success.

In a sense, the KRI offers a way to talk about the early life experiences of children in our community. Because this information is collected on the first day of school, the measure doesn’t comment on a child’s kindergarten experience. Instead, it tells us about their earliest years and learning experiences. Early childhood is a key part of the story of school readiness and success because the first years of life are a period of extraordinary brain development and plasticity. During these years positive interventions are likely to have the greatest effect on subsequent development and well-being.

SCHOOL-READINESS REFLECTS EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT

A growing body of evidence from neuroscience tells us that the first few years of life are a period of astonishing brain development. Early brain development is particularly responsive to positive interventions because children’s brains develop in response to their environment. An environment of nurturing and supportive relationships nurtures a child’s innate curiosity and desire to learn, setting that child on the path to a lifetime of learning. Conversely, when we allow children to spend their first few years in an environment of uncertainty, chaos, and neglect, we miss a critical opportunity to strengthen early brain development and school readiness.

SCHOOL-READINESS PLACES CHILDREN ON A PATHWAY TO ACADEMIC SUCCESS

Children who reach school ready to learn are more likely to experience continued success through school and later in life. They are more likely to read comfortably by fourth grade, to advance successfully through middle and high school, graduate on-time, and go to college. When more children in a community reach school ready to learn, community-wide levels of human and social capital rise. This is why economists tell us that high-quality, early-childhood investments are the smartest development dollars that a community can spend. These early investments, in turn, provide a rock-solid foundation for investments later in life: The dollars we spend on older children – through k-12 public education, for example – go further when they build upon strong early childhoods.

HIGH-QUALITY PRE-KINDERGARTEN SUPPORTS SCHOOL READINESS

One way to increase the percent of children ready for kindergarten is to insure that they attend a high-quality, pre-kindergarten program. Results on the KRI suggest that beginning kindergartners who arrive from a center-based early education program (including Memphis City Schools’ Pre-Kindergarten program, the federal Head Start program, or a similar center-based early-education program) perform significantly higher on the KRI than did students who had not attend a similar preschool. Studies conducted in other regions reach essentially the same conclusion. Further, while almost all children benefit from a year of pre-kindergarten, low-income kids make the greatest gains.

Young children’s language and vocabulary develops through exposure to language from adults – through conversation, storytelling and reading. When it comes to language development, more is better. Given that children’s exposure to language can vary widely across families, the additional adult language heard in preschool may give children a boost toward school readiness.

Pre-kindergarten also offers more opportunities to play with toys, puzzles, and counting and sorting games. Teachers introduce activities that enrich cognitive, social and physical development and expand children’s general knowledge. Children in center-based early education also learn how to navigate the schedule of a school day, how to peacefully resolve problems with peers, and how to pay attention to directions.

But high-quality pre-school is expensive, and slots are scarce for children in poverty – the children who would benefit most. Today, more than 85 percent of professional parents place their own children in high-quality, early care and education programs. In Memphis, fewer than four in ten entering kindergartners have attended either Head Start or MCS pre-kindergarten.

HIGH POVERTY RATES THREATEN KINDERGARTEN READINESS

Poverty in early childhood threatens early development and can undermine school readiness. This is a serious issue for the Memphis community, where roughly 6,800 children entering kindergarten each year (close to 80 percent of each kindergarten class) are from low-income families (with incomes that make them eligible for the federal free and reduced price lunch program).

In Memphis, KRI results show that schools with higher concentrations of middle-income and affluent children generally also have higher levels of kindergarten readiness. But there is another important finding in this data: among children from our poorest neighborhoods and families, we find significant differences in readiness as well. At one and the same time, both the weakest and some of the strongest cohorts of kindergartners in the city are found among our lowest-income children.

We argue that this is very good news. First, these findings suggest that statistics are not destiny, and the broad socio-economic risk-factors that social scientists tell us threaten child well-being can be overcome by engaged parents, aided by high-quality early-childhood educational interventions.

What explains the high number of children in Memphis who reach school in much better shape than their risk profile would predict?

Part of the answer is parents who embrace their role as their child’s first teacher, nurturing their infants and toddlers through play, story-telling, laughter and singing. Another part of the answer likely will be found in high-quality early education and pre-kindergarten experiences for some of our kids. Still a third piece of the story has to do with neighborhood, community, and church supports that help to protect children from unsafe environments, poor nutrition, community violence, chaotic home lives, and toxic stress.

In time, we hope to be able to understand which configurations of early childhood experience in our community help to place at-risk children on a pathway to school readiness, academic achievement, and safe and healthy adulthood. With this information, our community will be better able to celebrate and nurture those early experiences that lead to the future we would choose for all of our children.