Ready School and District Models...Activities
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. 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.
State’s Early Education Alignment/Focus Commended
Other States (more links to come)
Boston, Massachusetts: Boston
Kindergarten Transition
Connecticut: Ready by 5…Fine by 9
Georgia: Aligning
Pre-K with Early Elementary Schooling Spotlight on Georgia
Hawaii
Indiana: Indiana transition
initiative
Chicago,
Illinois Chicago Parent Centers
Independence,
Missouri
New Jersey: PK-3
Oregon: Transition to Kindergarten
Washington State: SOAR The Early Childhood and School Readiness Action Agenda
In North Carolina
We are applying a layered approach for systems change. Smart Start/The North
Carolina Partnership for Children is coordinating our efforts at the top
(working with the Office of School Readiness, and Department of Public Instruction)
while also partnering with educators, parents, child care professionals,
business leaders, and community liaisons. Other key partners at the state
level include:
- NC Association of Educators
- NC PTA
- NC Principals and Assistant Principals Association
- NC Association for the Education of Young Children
- B-K Consortium
- FPG Child Development Institute
- NC Division of Child Development
Projects/Models in North Carolina
- First School: Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG) 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/
The Power of K position paper adopted by the state of North Carolina
also has a Kindergarten Teacher Academy. Thirty-six teachers were selected
from over 219 applicants to participate in a three-year cohort of teachers.
A preschool Teacher Academy will convene as well.
For more information on Power of K! Teacher’s Academy go to http://community.learnnc.org/dpi/ec/archives/2007/10/the_power_of_k.php
SPARK: The SPARK Initiative was developed and funded through the W.K. Kellogg
Foundation in eight states. North Carolina received one of the SPARK grants.
This grant has funded our ready schools-related efforts on a statewide basis
as well as being used for a more intensive focus in Nash and Edgecombe Counties
in the east and in Region A (the seven western-most counties) in the western
part of North Carolina. (For more information on the SPARK Initiative, go
to: http://www.wkkf.org/default.aspx?tabid=75&CID=168&NID=61&LanguageID=0
)
