Star Tribune Echoes Concerns about Kindergarten Readiness

Today's editorial in the StarTribune once again highlights the need for greater investments in quality early learning experiences for our youngest citizens. Citing the Kindergarten Readiness Study released earlier this month, the editorial shows how a lack of investment has created a lack of progress in getting our children prepared for school. While legislative leaders have taken steps to recognize the importance of high quality early care and education, that support has yet to be translated into funding increases.

Editorial: Make preschool a funding priority

Scores show that talk alone isn't improving early learning

What may be Minnesota's most important educational report card was issued earlier this month, and the marks weren't good. The fall 2008 results of a yearly school readiness assessment of new kindergartners were down from 2007 on all five aspects of development measured.

Fewer than half of the 6,310 kindergartners surveyed -- 10 percent of the state total -- were deemed "proficient" and fully ready for school. About two out of five were rated "in process" toward readiness. On two key measures, language/literacy and mathematical thinking, one child in eight was judged "not yet" prepared.

Those are troubling findings -- particularly since they come in the sixth year of the assessment, five years after the formation of the Legislature's early childhood caucus, and almost a decade after research and grass-roots advocacy efforts coalesced to put early education on state policy agendas.

Despite those efforts, too many children are still arriving in kindergarten behind and, research says, prone to stay behind throughout their school years. "Why would there have been progress?" asked Todd Otis, executive director of the advocacy group Ready 4 K. Though policymakers are talking more about the value of early learning, "we haven't done anything different to change these numbers."

Read the full Star Tribune editorial here.