Anonymous wrote:

If you do not push the kids who come in behind though and continue to rightfully let the more prepared kids move ahead, how do the kids who did not have preschool catch up?


It is not a matter of just not having preschool. It is the home environment. Here is a fact: No Kindergarten class is going to have all kids equally prepared or ready.



Yes. And so therefore...?

Sorry, I thought it was clear. The teacher will teach all the children--those who are advanced and those who are not. Few teachers will have a class in lock-step.

I thought you were clear.

If you do not push the kids who come in behind though and continue to rightfully let the more prepared kids move ahead, how do the kids who did not have preschool catch up?


It is not a matter of just not having preschool. It is the home environment. Here is a fact: No Kindergarten class is going to have all kids equally prepared or ready.



Yes. And so therefore...?

Sorry, I thought it was clear. The teacher will teach all the children--those who are advanced and those who are not. Few teachers will have a class in lock-step.

Anonymous wrote:

If you do not push the kids who come in behind though and continue to rightfully let the more prepared kids move ahead, how do the kids who did not have preschool catch up?

It is not a matter of just not having preschool. It is the home environment. Here is a fact: No Kindergarten class is going to have all kids equally prepared or ready.

Yes. And so therefore...?

Anonymous wrote:Addition to 5--at the beginning of K? Ridiculous.

The standard is for the child to be able to add within 5 by the end of kindergarten. At the beginning of kindergarten, the kindergarten teacher only assesses whether the child can already do it. Do you think that it is inappropriate for a kindergarten teacher to assess this?

If you do not push the kids who come in behind though and continue to rightfully let the more prepared kids move ahead, how do the kids who did not have preschool catch up?

It is not a matter of just not having preschool. It is the home environment. Here is a fact: No Kindergarten class is going to have all kids equally prepared or ready.

Addition to 5--at the beginning of K? Ridiculous.

That K readiness list strikes me as very ambitious for fall of K. Dividing syllables? Dd in 1at I think still has not learned about syllables and dividing them from what I can tell.

As for some of the less crazy things like knowing all your letters, the schools are in a tough spot since the reality is that almost all middle class kids go to preachool first and so come in knowing much more than K kids did a generation ago. But poor kids likely have not had that so they are starting from a much similar spot to when I went to K.

If you do not push the kids who come in behind though and continue to rightfully let the more prepared kids move ahead, how do the kids who did not have preschool catch up?

Anonymous wrote:Nevertheless, the standards on the readiness test are nowhere near as demanding as the Common Core standards for the end of the year. The standards on that readiness list are reasonable for the end of K and they would have made decent CC standards for K.

Which Common Core standards are unreasonable for the end of kindergarten, and why do you say that they are unreasonable?

In any case, there is no "nevertheless". The OP's contention was that preschoolers are flunking the Common Core test for kindergarten. But as it turns out, it's only some preschoolers, nobody knows what the "flunking" entails, it's not a test, and it's not Common Core. So there's no factual basis to the contention at all.

Nevertheless, the standards on the readiness test are nowhere near as demanding as the Common Core standards for the end of the year. The standards on that readiness list are reasonable for the end of K and they would have made decent CC standards for K.

I don't know the details, but there is a calculation for overall "demonstrating readiness" that is based on compiling the results across all learning domains. I would stress that there are no consequences for a child who does not do well on the KRA. It is just supposed to help the teacher to better meet that child's needs.

I agree that the news article was very confusing.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But what counts as "ready for kindergarten" on the KRA? Does the incoming kindergartener have to be able to do all of those things in order to be considered ready? Or just some percentage of those things? Or just a few, key things? How does it work?

The overall readiness score is based on all of these things, but there is more nuanced data available showing which areas are strengths and weaknesses. Based on the assessment, a child is either "demonstrating", "approaching" or "emerging" readiness in each area. The teacher will have this data for each individual child. The state and school districts have this data in aggregate. Personally, I think it would be great if they shared it with parents too, but that has not been the practice.

So in other words, incoming kindergarteners don't have to be able to do all of the things on the list, right? The list is just an assessment of all of the different things that they might or might not be able to do.

But the shoddy WTOP news article is splitting the pre-K test results into a binary ready/unready. And I seem to remember previous news reports with a binary "x% of kindergarteners were ready for kindergarten" kind of thing. When the news reports say this, what constitutes "ready for kindergarten"?

Thank you very much for explaining these things, by the way!

Anonymous wrote:But what counts as "ready for kindergarten" on the KRA? Does the incoming kindergartener have to be able to do all of those things in order to be considered ready? Or just some percentage of those things? Or just a few, key things? How does it work?

The overall readiness score is based on all of these things, but there is more nuanced data available showing which areas are strengths and weaknesses. Based on the assessment, a child is either "demonstrating", "approaching" or "emerging" readiness in each area. The teacher will have this data for each individual child. The state and school districts have this data in aggregate. Personally, I think it would be great if they shared it with parents too, but that has not been the practice.

But what counts as "ready for kindergarten" on the KRA? Does the incoming kindergartener have to be able to do all of those things in order to be considered ready? Or just some percentage of those things? Or just a few, key things? How does it work?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

These are the standards that are used for the kindergarten readiness assessment. Is there anything on this list that you think that a kindergarten should not be able to do in the beginning of the year?

Should? Lots of Kindergarten kids cannot do those things at the beginning of the year. These should be end of year for most kids.

The Common Core standards for kindergarten are for the end of the year.

Yes,but the standards that are posted above are specifically for the kindergarten readiness assessment in the beginning of the year. They are aligned with the Common Core, but were developed specifically for Maryland.

Where did whoever posted that link get the information? All I saw was a context-less list of standards, with no explanation of where or how people use them.

These are the standards that are used for the newly revised kindergarten readiness assessment, which is used in every K class in Maryland. I thought this whole thread is about the assessment (which everyone seems to be opposed to, but doesn't understand.) In other words, all of the items on the assessment (which is based on teacher observation) are designed to measure whether students are proficient on these skills. When you hear that X% of kindergarten students are demonstrating readiness for K, that is the % of students who can demonstrate proficiency in these skills. Teachers use KRA results to better target instruction to students who need help in different areas.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

These are the standards that are used for the kindergarten readiness assessment. Is there anything on this list that you think that a kindergarten should not be able to do in the beginning of the year?

Should? Lots of Kindergarten kids cannot do those things at the beginning of the year. These should be end of year for most kids.

The Common Core standards for kindergarten are for the end of the year.

Yes,but the standards that are posted above are specifically for the kindergarten readiness assessment in the beginning of the year. They are aligned with the Common Core, but were developed specifically for Maryland.

Where did whoever posted that link get the information? All I saw was a context-less list of standards, with no explanation of where or how people use them.