(Parents don't have time to raise their own kids, they are having "mommy" or relative or friend watch the kid while they are out Clubing or hooking up. Lets be REAL about the reason)
Ready for kindergarten? Florida's new test found many youngsters were not
The percentage of Florida youngsters deemed ready for kindergarten plummeted last year, thanks to a new test that tripped up many 5-year-olds.
About 54 percent of the students who started kindergarten in public schools in August 2017 were ready for school, according to the test results recently released by the Florida Department of Education.
Four years earlier, 72 percent of new kindergartners were ready, based on another test used to determine literacy skills.
The low passing rate on the new test upset early-childhood educators across Central Florida and the state. They doubt its accuracy. They fear students struggled in part because it was an online test and they were unfamiliar with working on a computer with a mouse. And they are angry because their state-funded pre-kindergarten programs are judged on how former students did on the new kindergarten-readiness test.
“I was shocked. I was beyond shocked,” said Cindy Seda, who owns A Tot’s World III in Winter Springs.
“We have always been very, very proud of our quality,” said Seda, whose Seminole County center has had the same pre-K teacher for 21 years. “I was never concerned the children leaving our center were ready for kindergarten.”
But the percentage of her former students who passed the kindergarten test was 60 percent this past year — down from nearly 90 percent in prior years
Seda’s center just met Florida’s new pre-K requirements, which were adopted this spring and require a 60 percent “readiness rate.”
Across Florida, however, 43 percent of the more than 6,000 schools and daycare centers that offer Florida Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten Program, or VPK,, failed to meet the new standard. This year, the state imposed no consequences on pre-k providers whose students fell short on the new test, but in coming years they could face probation and then removal from the state program.
Florida’s pre-K program is publicly funded but mostly contracted out to private preschools and childcare centers, though some public schools take part, too. The program is free to all 4-year-olds, with more than 163,000 students enrolled this past year.
Florida had not given a literacy test to new kindergarten students since 2013 because of problems with its previous exam, which was also given on computer. The state also didn’t rate its pre-K providers during those four years.
It gave its new kindergarten test — Star Early Literacy — for the first time in August. In late May, it published the rates on a website parents can use to search for pre-K programs.
“The public will judge you on that, whether it is fair or not,” Seda said.
The state’s Office of Early Learning, which oversees the pre-K program, called the new test a “starting point from which we can set higher expectations” and said lower scores with a new test are not surprising. It noted that youngsters who took part in the state pre-K program had a 64 percent passing rate — about 10 percentage points better than that of all new kindergartners.
The state’s education department also defended the 27-question test, saying it is meant for young children and does not require them to have prior computer skills, assessing their ability to navigate through the questions before allowing them to begin.
But many remain skeptical, questioning why the results this year would be so much worse than from several years ago.
“I keep asking the question, What does it mean to be ready for school?” said Karen Willis, chief executive officer of the Early Learning Coalition of Orange County, one of the local groups that helps oversee state-funded pre-K programs. “That shouldn’t waver from test to test.”
An online petition started by a preschool principal in Broward County asks Gov. Rick Scott to remove the new results from the state website. “Our programs and schools do prepare children for kindergarten and the world JUST not your assessment,” reads the petition on change.org that has 427 signatures.
“The readiness rate was really not done fairly this year,” agreed Carol Foo, executive director of Conway Learning Center in Orange County.
Her school had an 87 percent readiness rate four years ago. It fell to 63 percent this year.
Like many preschools, the Conway center does not have children spend time working at a computer and manipulating a mouse. Young students who do use technology, she and others said, are more familiar with tablets and smartphones, which they can touch and swipe.
The Orange County school district, which offers the state’s pre-K program at about 80 elementary schools, was upset by the low scores this year, too, said Meg Bowen, director of elementary curriculum and instruction.
State law requires the readiness test to be given within the first 30 days of school, and many kindergarten teachers administer it almost as soon as classes start. In the coming year, Bowen said, they’ll first spend time making sure their new students are comfortable working with a computer and a mouse. That will help administrators see if the problem was the technology — or the test itself.
Since its inception in 2005, educators have questioned the Florida law that required pre-K providers to be judged on how their graduates do on a kindergarten readiness test.
They argue such a system doesn’t take into account what skills children had when they started pre-K, making it hard to gauge whether preschools helped their students. They don’t like that it is given at the start kindergarten, months after pre-K programs end, so some student skills are lost over the summer. Finally, they note that Florida’s academic standards for pre-K describe play-based learning, where students gain early reading and math skills but also grow socially, express their creativity and explore.
The readiness test, however, focuses solely on literacy skills.
“What we taught them is not being captured,” said Lesha Buchbinder, executive director of the Early Learning Coalition of Lake County.
