Kindergarten study: Fewer Springfield children ready to learn

It is a step back.

A report released this week shows fewer Springfield area children were ready for kindergarten in 2014, compared to just four years ago.

The Readiness for Kindergarten report, conducted every four years since 2006, shows nearly 28 percent of students entering kindergarten in the fall — or six children in a class of 20 — were "not prepared" to learn.

They were less likely to know shapes and colors or how to hold a book, line up or keep their hands to themselves.

Four years ago, just 20 percent or 1 in 5, were not ready.

"We are losing ground with early childhood with the number of students really ready for kindergarten," said Springfield school board member Gerry Lee, a member of the Mayor's Commission for Children, which commissions the report. "We are taking a step backward and it is concerning."

So what happened?

This year's kindergarten class was born at the end of the Great Recession, which officially lasted until mid-2009. The prolonged economic downturn led to severe cuts in public funding for early childhood education. Plus, grants, which had been ample in previous years, quickly dried up.

Springfield Public Schools' poverty rate climbed, indicating more families were struggling to make ends meet.

Fewer families were likely able to afford private or fee-based preschool. At the same time, there were dramatic federal and state funding cuts to public programs — such as Parents As Teachers, Head Start, and Wonder Years, the district's preschool program — lowering the number of openings.

"These are the children that suffered as the result of that," said Missy Riley, director of Springfield's early childhood program, pointing to the drop in school readiness. "For me it paints the story of their five years of life."

Denise Bredfeldt, executive director of the Mayor's Commission for Children, said "without sustained funding for programs, it is difficult to sustain impact."

"Funding almost got chopped in half for all those programs," she said. State funding for Parents As Teachers was cut by 40 percent at one point and the number of Wonder Years classrooms dropped by nearly half.

In the early 2000s, the commission requested the study as a way to gauge school readiness and see, over time, if access to early childhood education was making a difference. The group cited national research showing a link between kindergarten readiness and the ability to stay on track, graduate on time and find success in college and the workforce.

The reports, conducted by the Missouri State University Center for Research & Service, are frequently cited in grant requests. They have also served as a baseline for the Every Child Promise, a community effort to improve school readiness.

The first report, in 2006, showed 80 percent of incoming kindergarten students were ready to learn. The area experienced an uptick in preschool funding in the four years that followed.

"It was kind of a flush time. There was a lot going on with early childhood and then it kind of went away because the economy crashed," Bredfeldt said. "If there was ever a story to be told about how you could get on a roll with everything going good and then have the life sucked out if it because you lost the funding, it is this right here."

Overall progress was evident in the second study, in 2008, but Springfield experienced the most dramatic improvement. A breakout of the Springfield results showed the percentage of students who were prepared went from 75 percent in 2006 to 80 percent in 2010.

This year, it fell to 72 percent.

"It validates everything we believed when we were crying out 'Don't cut our Parents As Teachers, don't cut our Wonder Years program, don't cut Head Start' because we are hurting our highest need kids," said Riley, who is also director of Springfield's Parents As Teachers. "It really comes back and shows the need."

Two-thirds of the children not ready to learn live in poverty.

Funding has improved in the past couple years but is still short of where it was before the economic downturn. A year ago, the Springfield school board vowed to increase local funding for Parents As Teachers by $1 million over a three-year period.

"It will have a significant impact on the (budget) discussion," Lee said. "I'm optimistic we'll be able to honor that commitment."

Springfield's school readiness levels have fluctuated over the 12-year period while the results for the other districts participating in the studies, Strafford and Fair Grove, remained fairly steady. They were able to maintain stable funding for early childhood despite the cuts.

The Every Child Promise developed a 10-year strategic plan to address the critical issues facing Springfield's children, including the lack of school readiness, and raised $1 million to pilot early childhood initiatives over a three-year period.

After this year, the school readiness study will be completed every two years. This year's report cost $7,000 and was paid for by a private donor.

The Promise's Dana Carroll, Springfield's Child Advocate, said she was disappointed in the results of the latest study.

"We were hoping for forward progress," she said.

Carroll said that progress depends on providing consistent and high quality options for young children, which requires sustainable funding.

"My mantra is local funding, local control," she said. "If we don't have stable funding, we won't have the consistency."

Key findings

The third Readiness for Kindergarten report was released this week. Key findings include:

•27.4 percent of Greene County students were "not prepared" for kindergarten in 2014, up from 19.9 percent in 2006 and 20.2 percent in 2010.

•Of those "not prepared" for kindergarten, two-thirds qualified for free or reduced price meals, a national measure of poverty.

•Only 68.4 percent of children attended a formal preschool program. But, among that group, nearly four out of five were prepared.

•Among children who did not attend a formal preschool program, only 12.9 percent were considered "well prepared."

•Girls were slightly more likely to be prepared than boys.

Getting the results

The Mayor's Commission for Children commissioned the first Readiness for Kindergarten study in 2006 and nine area school districts participated. Four were involved with the 2010 study and just three — Springfield, Fair Grove and Strafford — participated in the 2014 study.

Springfield has been involved all three years.

Each year, the Missouri State University Center for Research & Service samples progress of students in participating districts and teachers are also surveyed.

For the 2014 study, the center pulled a random sample of five students from each of the 105 kindergarten classes in those three districts.

Also for the recent study, a total of 525 surveys were sent to kindergarten teachers and 340, or 67 percent, were returned. Among other things, the survey used questions from standardized exams to assess students' social and emotional development.