By Beth Dotson Brown
Special to NKyTribune
When Kentucky released its kindergarten-readiness scores in January, the Berea College Promise Neighborhood staff celebrated. And with good reason.
Since 2012, the scores in the college’s “neighborhood” of Clay, Jackson and Owsley counties overall have increased from 16 percent to 42 percent. In other words, more students are prepared to get a positive start in school.
This is just one part of the work of Berea College Promise Neighborhood, the first rural Promise Neighborhood in the country. As part of the program, the U.S. Department of Education provides funding to support a continuum of services from birth to postsecondary education, with the ultimate goal of increasing postsecondary graduation rate in its designated counties.
Promise Neighborhood is part of Berea College’s Partners for Education, which manages initiatives that strive for success for all students in Appalachia and demonstrates the college’s ongoing commitment to the people of the Appalachian region.
In the Promise Neighborhood, that commitment begins at birth where parents and their babies participate in Early Steps to School Success, a Save the Children home visiting program. Promise Neighborhood supports this program as well as the transition the child eventually makes into preschool. That’s where early childhood specialists provide individual attention to the students who don’t demonstrate the same level of skills as others.
In Owsley County, Promise Neighborhood Early Childhood Specialist Jennifer Bryant identified a student who still wasn’t ready for kindergarten at the end of her time in preschool. The girl could only identify one letter of the alphabet. Bryant knew there was still time to prepare her. She visited the child in her Owsley County home as part of a summer intervention initiative designed to help students who weren’t quite ready for kindergarten.
On one day, Bryant worked with the girl using a letter chart to identify three letters of the alphabet. At the beginning of her next visit with the child, Bryant said she couldn’t believe what she found—the student identified all three letters in upper and lower case.
“She also used the technique I had shown her to identify the letters we would be working on that day without any assistance from me. She continued to amaze me with how much she learned over a few weeks,” Bryant says.
Owsley County’s kindergarten-readiness scores made the largest increase in the Promise Neighborhood during the past year, moving from a 19 percent readiness rate to 55.7 percent.
“Our parents, teachers, family service workers and education managers – from Early Head Start, Head Start and Preschool – have worked very hard in individualizing instruction by developing personalized learning plans for each child based upon their assessment data,” says Sheila Thomas, director of Early Childhood Education for Owsley County.
Thomas adds that because they use a team approach to address health, nutrition and development, children are better prepared to learn. Teachers have also worked to improve instruction and create learning environments that are safe and well-equipped with age-appropriate learning materials.
Early childhood centers throughout the Promise Neighborhood have improved their quality, as demonstrated by seven early learning centers earning their STARS rating, which is a public acknowledgement of the quality of care they offer. These voluntary ratings will become mandatory, so earning their STARS rating helps them prepare for that change.
Tenant Kirk, associate director of Early Childhood and Elementary Services, sent Thomas a note of congratulations when she saw the scores. Kirk has led Promise Neighborhood’s work with Save the Children, Community Early Childhood Councils, public preschools and Head Start. This work supports the professional development of early childhood specialists and improves services to children.
Because it does all of this, Kirk says it also supports quality improvement efforts from the Kentucky Governor’s Office of Early Childhood and Unbridled Learning Accountability Model. The GOEC is revising its preschool rating system so all Kentucky children will have access to high-quality early care and education programs.
“Our biggest accomplishment is having early childhood specialists become active members of the Community Early Childhood Councils in each county to design activities that support family engagement with their young children’s learning. Through the CECCs we are supporting activities such as Week of the Young Child, Dolly Parton Imagination Library, Transition Picnics (fun evenings with food and entertainment aimed at providing parent education about school readiness and the importance of kindergarten attendance), and dissemination of child development information,” Kirk says.
She also notes that these CECCs recently received oral health grants that are improving oral health education for children and families in the Neighborhood.
Another of Kirk’s goals is to engage the public in a discussion about the importance of early childhood experiences. She has organized the upcoming preview screening of the new documentary, The Raising of America. This will be March 10, 1 – 3:30 p.m. at Phelps Stokes Chapel on the Berea College campus. Save the Children U.S. Vice President Kathy Spangler will introduce the film as she speaks about “Early Childhood and the Future of our Nation.” The public is invited.
Beth Dotson Brown is associate director of communications and collaboration for Berea College’s Promise Neighborhood.