Sierra Sanchez
Campaign for Grade-Level Reading
Kindergarten matters. What happens in that crucial transitional year lays the groundwork for learning and development that are essential to early school success, academic achievement and life outcomes. That is why the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading has launched a new webinar series Kindergarten Matters in 2024. This series builds on and accelerates our work on this topic and reflects forward-looking civic action and advocacy priorities.
This community of practice will…allow the kindergarten year to become a more effective path to early school success and learning recovery, especially for those children who have been historically underserved and most adversely affected by the ongoing pandemic.
Getting kindergarten right has to be top of mind for all of us, because what happens there sets the stage for how a child learns and develops well into their elementary years and beyond.
In 2021, CGLR joined the Department of Education’s call to ensure kindergarten becomes “a more effective path to early school success and learning recovery.” During 2022–2023, in partnership with New America’s Early & Elementary Education Policy Program, we presented a series of eight webinars that gleaned insights from research and practice, explored what educators, state and local decision-makers, practitioners and funders are doing and highlighted opportunities to do more to promote literacy, math and social-emotional development in kindergarten. Highlights from those sessions can be found here.
Like many, our attention to this issue was galvanized by research findings documenting that the entire third–grade reading gap is evident by the end of kindergarten. Confirming insights from practice and common sense, Harvard Professor James Kim’s analysis of a large school district’s data documented an 11-point difference in reading proficiency between children in low- and high-income neighborhoods at the end of third grade and found that same gap was evident at the end of kindergarten. The same was true when comparing children by race and ethnicity and developmental experiences could close the gap and put more children on a success trajectory.
Source: Read Charlotte https://www.readcharlotte.org/approach/
To accelerate progress and increase the number of children who cross the “sturdy bridge” successfully, Kindergarten Matters will continue to help answer the question: “What is working, where and how?” These monthly webinars will address a wide range of topics, lifting up what early learning, preK, kindergarten and early grade educators; parents; state and local policymakers; and communities are doing and can do to ensure that more children transition into and through the kindergarten inflection point prepared to succeed. The series will draw from research, policy, practice and lived experience to explore:
- How parents and caregivers can help build the necessary foundations so their children are ready to thrive during kindergarten, and what’s working to engage and support them in this critical role.
- How educators are nurturing the relationships, routines and habits that encourage the kind of family engagement and parent/teacher partnerships that support everyday school attendance during kindergarten and beyond.
- How to support teachers in acquiring and deploying the skills needed to create safe and supportive environments and trusting relationships with children and caregivers along with building children’s cognitive, social and emotional development.
- How the special needs of children who enter kindergarten with learning differences, disabilities and/or challenges that could derail them can be supported, such as those who are emerging bilinguals or have unaddressed vision or hearing problems
