Kindergarten Readiness Rates Are Shockingly Low. But That May Not Mean What We Think It Does.

Just 1 in 3 kids entering public school kindergarten in Franklin County, Ohio are actually ready to enter kindergarten, according to the most recent reporting of the Ohio Kindergarten Readiness Assessment by the nonprofit organization Future Ready Five. The rest of the state has similar numbers.

These numbers represent the dynamic set of experiences, challenges and opportunities that our youngest school children bring with them to school, says Allison Riggle, MSW, EdD, project manager for Infant and Child Readiness at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

When you look deeper into the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment, you find trends in disparities across the social determinants of health.

“The KRA is not just a measure of academic readiness but a testament to many of the social issues and the stresses that some children and families experience,” Dr. Riggle said.

The KRA assesses not just mathematics and language and literacy, but also physical well-being, motor development and “social foundations” like emotional development and approaches to learning. Readiness for kindergarten takes all of these into account.

According to state data, there can be as much as a 46% difference in the readiness rates between children who are economically disadvantaged and those who aren’t. There are similar disparities for children whose primary language is not English, or who are disabled. White children have a 52.5% readiness rate, and Hispanic children have a 14.6% readiness rate.

Other disparities may be embedded in the KRA numbers that we can’t fully understand because of the way the data is reported. A child can be as young as 4 years of age when taking the assessment (depending on district age entry requirements), or as old as 7 if caregivers have delayed their child’s entry into kindergarten. Some have attended a comprehensive preschool; others are leaving their family caregivers for the first time.

But all of these children are just starting kindergarten, says Dr. Riggle. Readiness scores are not a reflection of the education at school. They are the culmination of experiences a child has had before traditional schooling has even started.

“The KRA is best as a tool for teachers, to help them understand their individual students,” she said. “Then, when we look at them from a broader perspective, they can help show all of us where disparities might be, and where we should focus our resources.”

Nationwide Children’s has made kindergarten readiness one of its “Pediatric Vital Signs,” or core community-level measures for understanding children’s overall well-being. The hospital also has a number of programs on early childhood development that can make a difference in a child’s readiness for school. Among them:

• The Nurse-Family Partnership, a home-visitation initiative to support mostly young, mostly first-time parents
• SPARK, a one-on-one kindergarten preparation program
• Reach Out and Read, which provides age-appropriate books to young children at their well-child checkups

There are others as well, including parent education programs. What the most successful programs have in common, though, is that they are labor and resource intensive. Nationwide Children’s is continuing to learn how the hospital can best reach the families who need the most support and partner with other interested organizations.

“There’s a lot more to understand about the factors that go into school readiness,” said Dr. Riggle. “There’s no easy solution, but we are committed to working with our community partners to support early childhood initiatives.”