Kindergarten summer school?

By TIMOTHY LAROCHE
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CLAREMONT — School district administrators announced this week the creation of a program that would extend the school year for kindergarteners in need of additional instruction.

Administrators say that implementing the program will give qualifying kindergarteners the opportunity to take an additional six weeks of classes during the summer, giving students who are “on the edge” of having developed the foundational skills needed for first grade additional instruction time.

“We are really talking about students who are on the cusp and need that extra bump before first grade,” Assistant Superintendent Cory LeClair said. “You have a higher chance of closing those achievement gaps in the early grades, and once you close those gaps they hold over time.”

The program is funded entirely through Title 1 money as part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which allows school districts with a high number of students coming from low-income families to provide programming with federal money. 

With more than half of Claremont’s nearly 1,750 students eligible for free and reduced lunch, the district receives close to $950,000 in Title 1 funding each year. The cost of employing nine staff for the program – including teachers and speech pathologists – and providing transportation and food for all of the students is expected to be nearly $100,000.

“We have some money due to some programming shifts that we were able to do to fund extended kindergarten,” LeClair said.

District administrators proposed the program after analyzing data taken from kindergarten entry and mid-year screenings. Educators found that prior to the current kindergarten class entering in fall 2017, 39 percent of students could not read their own names, 16 percent could not recognize capital letters, 19 percent could not recognize lowercase letters and 19 percent could not count to 10.

By January 2018, that same group of students saw growth, but 17 percent of students still could not recognize more than 42 capital and lowercase letters – falling short of the target number of recognizing 47 or more letters. Furthermore, 12 percent of students could not count to 20, and 27 percent could not recognize more than seven sight words – short of the target of 11 words.

“When you think about typical development for a 5-year-old, to me, that is rather alarming,” LeClair said. “Based on what I know about typical development for 3-year-olds, 3-year-olds can typically recognize their own names and count to 10.”

Data from another assessment used by the district to measure the need for intensive support shows that nearly half of the students entering kindergarten required intensive services. By January, that rate dropped to just over 20 percent of student needing intensive services. The statistics point to a gap between many Claremont kindergarteners and their peers.

Small achievement gaps in earlier grade levels are exacerbated as students climb through the grades, LeClair said. The idea of the program then would be to address the gap before it becomes more pronounced in later grades, she said.

“It’s more costly to intervene later than it is to [intervene] early,” LeClair said. “You get a better return on your investments … what we’ve seen historically is that the gap between those who are on the same level already and those who are not continues to get wider and wider as they go up in grades.”

The program will begin after the regular school year ends, running to the beginning of August after a break during the first week of July. Qualifying students will be referred to the program based on need and adequate behavior during the school year. Students identified as homeless under McKinney-Vento Act criteria will automatically qualify for the program.

 

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