Alliance Q3 2023 Meeting Recap: School Readiness
On September 13, early learning leaders from across Tarrant County met to discuss “school readiness” — What does it mean? How do we measure it? Who is responsible for it? After all, it is a central part of ELA’s mission statement: to ensure Kindergarten readiness for all children in Tarrant County through a cross-sector collaboration committed to thriving children. In a recent LinkedIn post, ELA Leadership Team Chair Audrey Rowland wrote:
The conversation around school readiness can be both complicated and overly simplified.
We use the phrase as a complete sentence. An idea that needs no qualifiers or descriptions.
Children must be “school ready.” If they aren’t, they won’t do well in school. If they don’t do well in school, they will fail at life.
It’s a bleak outlook.
But what does it mean to be school ready? We don’t have a common definition. But we do have multiple assessments that purportedly deem a child ready or not ready.
The truth is, all children get to go to school, ready or not.
Without a common definition or even sound reasoning for “school readiness,” we have sent the early childhood years into a tailspin.
We need to reframe what preschool means. Pre-school is the years preceding school. It’s not prep for school.
Those years before school are critical. Children need a childhood. They need time to play and discover and build their personhood. They need to find joy and develop a passion for life. They need to be free of academic obligation or prep for the workforce. They need safety and kindness and care.
When children experience a healthy childhood, they are ready to take on the next stage. They are ready to learn and are interested in the world around them. They have confidence in themselves and trust in the world.
That is what “school-ready” looks like.
We owe children a childhood in order to prepare them for school. If we can protect childhood and preserve play while ensuring all children are safe and whole, then schools can take on the work of readiness.
Are *they* ready?
While this way of thinking about school readiness beyond kindergarten assessment scores is not the norm, ELA is not alone. Texans Care for Children, a state-wide, multi-issue children’s policy organization joined the Alliance meeting to lead a discussion on the Texas School Readiness Dashboard. The Dashboard highlights four areas that measure school readiness (hint: none of them are children’s test scores):
The Dashboard serves as an easily accessible data resource on how Texas is doing on specific metrics that fall into one of the four categories. The Dashboard will also soon have local data for some Texas regions, including Tarrant County.
Considering that kindergarten readiness is in ELA’s mission statement, how does a community-level, whole-child understanding of readiness impact the work of the Alliance? Certainly, organizations focused on any of these areas — household resources, adult-child interactions, health & development, and early learning — should see their place within the Alliance. The Texas School Readiness Dashboard highlights the importance of a multi-sector approach to improving the systems that impact the lives of children and families, a strategy that ELA has embodied since its inception.
As we move forward armed with a recommitment to ensuring healthy, full childhoods for Tarrant County kids, we invite all members of the community to join us. True systemic change will take all of us — parents, politicians, businesses, educators, philanthropists, researchers, and service providers. Our kids are worth it!
