Community Voices Column: Working together to help ease children's transition to Kindergarten

By Minnie Forte-Brown
Board of Education Chair, Durham Public Schools

As Chair of the Durham Public Schools Board of Education, I know how critical it is for children to arrive at school healthy and ready to learn each day. Research shows that by kindergarten a tremendous difference already exists between children who have had quality early learning experiences and those who have not—severely reducing their chances of ever catching up with their peers. Dr. Carl Harris says the widest gap can be seen the first day of Kindergarten between children who are ready and children who are behind. Some of our youngest children haven’t been exposed to early learning environments and often don’t have the social, emotional or cognitive skills of their peers who have been afforded a “Smart Start.”

School readiness is arriving at school with the knowledge, skills and physical and emotional health needed to successfully participate. School readiness is more than just cognitive development. It includes having basic human needs such as food, shelter and loving and nurturing relationships met so that children can focus on learning.

That’s why our work with Durham’s Partnership for Children has a direct impact on our work in the public school system. Durham Public Schools is collaborating with the Partnership to identify ways to improve the transition to kindergarten for children in licensed child care facilities and for those who are not served in child care settings. These efforts are set forth in Durham County’s Transition to Kindergarten Initiative.

In FY 2008-09, Durham Public Schools and the Partnership began to build a Transition to Kindergarten Plan for Durham County that begins in pre-school and continues through kindergarten.  This plan engages all partners― children, families, early childhood teachers and elementary school teachers. A Partnership data snapshot, Getting Ready: Indicators of School Readiness, is a School Readiness Report Card which found the need for additional child data at kindergarten entry.  Both organizations are working to develop a system-wide plan to capture and record data on the Kindergarten Health Assessment and Parent Survey to better analyze indicators for school readiness and to track county-wide outcomes for children successfully entering and succeeding in school. 

By our ability to measure school readiness and incorporate strategies to ease the transition of pre-school or home to kindergarten, we can help to build more support for students. The long-term implications measuring these outcomes could mean less remediation, higher graduation rates and a stronger post-graduate workforce for Durham.

School readiness is truly a systems effort involving families, schools and the broader community.

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