>>The Maryland State Department of Education's
Ready for Kindergarten initiative has a simple
purpose - to improve outcomes for young
children and shape early childhood education.
In fact, children who enter kindergarten at
higher levels of readiness are more likely to succeed
academically throughout their school careers,
as well as later in life.
In 2011, Maryland was awarded a Race to the Top
Early Learning Challenge grant.
With those funds, and together with the state of
Ohio, kindergarten entry assessments were revised
and enhanced.
The Kindergarten Readiness Assessment was designed to
help teachers to measure each child's school
readiness across multiple areas,
which come directly from the Maryland Pre-K to
College Career Readiness Standards.
These areas include social foundations,
language and literacy, mathematics,
physical well-being and motor development.
This is not a pencil-and-paper
assessment.
The Kindergarten Readiness Assessment rests on
teachers' observations of childrens' work and play
to build a detailed picture of what they need
as they begin the school year.
The assessment items come from skills,
knowledge and behaviors that students should have
learned during their 4-year-old year.
Children are assessed on many traditional classroom
activities, such as cutting out a shape,
counting, selecting an object,
taking turns or completing activities on a tablet.
Teachers will use a standardized paper or
electronic rubric to score students' readiness based
on their observations.
Once the assessment is complete,
the information is entered into a database so the
teacher can look at it on both the individual
student level and for the entire class.
The Kindergarten Readiness Assessment is a tool meant
to inform teachers, parents and administrators
on the readiness gaps so that they can be
addressed.
The data collected will be used for three purposes -
to provide teachers with information about their
students so they can plan instruction based on their
needs, to help inform state policy decisions,
to provide parents with information about their
children, so they can know which skills to work on at home.
>>As kindergarten teachers,
our job is to get to know them from the beginning
so that we know how to support them instructionally and
emotionally and socially throughout the year.
>>One of the best things is the observational data.
It just gives us an idea - or it gives me an idea -
of where my students are and where I need to take
them.
>>I think the data that I collected will definitely
help instruction.
I think it was a very natural assessment to
give.
>>It really forced us to consider multiple ways to
look at children and multiple ways to gather
information and to be creative in the way that
we set up our classroom and our environment to
support students.
>>The Kindergarten Readiness Assessment is an
exciting new tool that will help to ensure our
children are prepared for their education and
careers.
For more information about the Kindergarten Readiness
Assessment, please talk with your child's teacher,
the school system or visit the website at
maryland.kready.org.