| Institute calls for better school readiness measure |
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Original Source | OregonLive
Fredrick D. Joe/The Oregonian
The Children's Institute in Portland released a report today urging the state to improve the way its measures whether children are ready for kindergarten. The state assessment, started in 1997 and conducted every two years since 2000, is a voluntary survey of kindergarten teachers. Based on their impressions, the teachers grade each child on qualities such as his or her approach to learning, social development, general knowledge and language development.The survey is cheap, easy to administer and reflects good standards, but it is unclear whether the results are representative and consistent among teachers, the institute's report says. The survey also fails to provide sufficient background and demographic information on children, limiting how much can be concluded from the data, it says. "Oregon needs a new baseline to accurately measure progress in school readiness," said Swati Adarkar, executive director of the Children's Institute. The state surveys have shown that the share of Oregon children entering kindergarten ready to learn has climbed from 58 percent in 1997 to 80 percent in 2004 and 2006. Such a dramatic jump should correspond to either a significant drop in children arriving at schools with various risk factors or a dramatic expansion of early childhood programs, but Oregon has seen neither, the report says. The institute recommends the Oregon Department of Education agree on a clear and focused purpose for the survey, require all teachers to participate in it or select a valid representative sample of children, provide teachers training on completing the survey and connect the results to relevant demographic information. |
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