Ready School Models
North Carolina is on the cutting edge of work in the United States to develop ready schools. This work is still an evolving process and there are few examples to draw upon across the country and no example of a statewide effort. We are endeavoring to learn from the experiences of individual schools in our work and developing demonstration models in our own state as well.
The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), through funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, has worked in six states to develop 31 Ready School sites. The elements of ready schools that they have worked to foster in these sites are very similar to the definition and pathways that the State Board of Education approved for North Carolina. For more information on this project and the lessons learned across the 31 ready school sites, see their report Early Steps with Ready Schools: The CCSSO School Readiness Project.
CCSSO also published a report on Parent Involvement at Selected Ready Schools in 2006 which provides insight into the impact of parent involvement in developing ready schools.
The National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP) has also played a key leadership role in the ready schools movement. They published a book on Leading Early Childhood Learning Communities – What Principals Should Know and Be Able to Do and have also developed a special training for elementary school principals that emphasizes the ideas and guidelines promoted in their book. NAESP has also done a series of case studies on schools that are emphasizing ready school reform efforts. More information these case studies can be found at Principals Lead The Way for PK-3.
In North Carolina, we are also fortunate to be able to draw upon the expertise and resources of the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG) in our ongoing work to promote and support ready schools. For the past three years, FPG has been planning its FirstSchool Project. FirstSchool is a new vision for early schooling of 3- to 8-year-old children that is being developed through a partnership among families, schools, the community, the FPG Child Development Institute, and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As part of this project, they plan to develop, implement, and evaluate a local FirstSchool model in order to inform a national framework for other communities to use to guide them toward providing a successful early school experience for all children and families.
The fundamental aim of FirstSchool is to ensure that all children’s and families’ early school experiences are positive and successful. To that end, during the current planning process, FirstSchool goals are to:
- Develop a national framework for children’s first school experiences, ages 3 to 8.
- Work with community partners to plan and open a local FirstSchool demonstration site.
- Develop products and strategies to help other communities interested in implementing the FirstSchool vision.
For more information on FirstSchool, go to http://www.fpg.unc.edu/~firstschool/
