Early learning initiative helps ease achievement gap
A recent San Mateo County civil grand jury report had some good and bad news for Coastside residents. The county is among the top three in California in overall physical health, education and prosperity. Yet despite those promising metrics, in 2015, only 50 percent of third-graders met state achievements for academic competence in English language arts.
And, according to the report “Spotlight: Early Learning Gets a Big Lift,” for English learners, racial minorities and children from low-income families, that percentage decreases dramatically.
To address the gulf in performance, the Peninsula Partnership Leadership Council — which includes the San Mateo County Office of Education, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation — came together to develop and launch the Big Lift initiative. After two years of planning, the program took off in 2013 as a five-year pilot program. The goal of the initiative is to raise the percentage of participating students reading at grade level to 80 percent by the year 2020.
Seven county school districts, including Cabrillo and La Honda-Pescadero unified school districts, are currently part of the Big Lift.
“The civil grand jury spotlighted the Big Lift initiative because interim assessments show that it is helping to bridge the academic achievement gap in San Mateo County,” said Richard Edminster, foreman of the grand jury, in a prepared statement.
The term “achievement gap” refers to the disparity in academic performance between different groups of students, whether by gender, socioeconomic status, race or ethnicity.
The Big Lift was based, in part, on findings that children who start kindergarten without any exposure to pre-academic cognitive development, or preschool, are less likely to develop solid reading skills by the third grade. Research has shown that early learning programs are crucial in preparing children to start school. Kids without those opportunities are more susceptible to falling behind in elementary school and four times more likely to drop out of high school.
In San Mateo County, families rely on a patchwork network of preschools that may offer a plethora of choices, but might also come at the expense of consistency and quality. Beyond that, for the 43 to 51 percent of families with one or two children that can’t afford the basic cost of living in the county, the added expense of early learning programs can often be too much to handle.
The Big Lift developers structured their program around four teaching approaches and learning strategies: high-quality preschool, a four-week summer learning program, targeted communication with families to promote school attendance and family engagement. Participating schools are given funding to provide services that address all of these elements.
Interim assessments already show that Big Lift preschoolers were more likely to be ready for kindergarten than children who didn’t attend preschool. Kindergarten through second-grade students who participated in the summer learning programs also showed a net gain of up to 3.5 months in their reading skills.
In 2020, kids participating in the program will take their standardized third-grade scholastic tests — pencils and bubble-sheets at the ready. The effectiveness of Big Lift will be measured using those scores, in addition to other developmental criteria.
However, funding for the program only extends through the summer of 2018. Another $11.4 million would need to be raised to fund the pilot program through the end in 2020.
August 8, 2018
Half Moon Bay Review
By Alex Orlando
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