Are they ready?

I just got back from a informational roundtable about the latest kindergarten readiness assessment that our state is looking to pilot in the fall and roll out officially the following year. It was a really interesting meeting that brought up a lot of excitement about the possibilities of a common assessment as well as concerns about how this will really look...Who will give the assessment? Will it be done before the school year starts? How will we find the time to fit it in if the assessment falls on the plate on the classroom teacher?

One thing that REALLY surprised me was that only 6 kindergarten teachers were at the meeting, 4 of which were from my own district! This could be a potentially huge development in kindergarten and classroom placement, yet the majority of people at the meeting were early childhood specialists. Do you find this odd, or it it just me? I think this is mostly due to the fact we only found out about the meeting (or the possibility of the assessment even!) last week. Most teachers are busy with their own family lives on a tuesday evening, so i'm sure a lot of them couldn't make it even if they wanted to.

 I am really concerned that if not enough kinder teachers are involved it could end up being created for the "ideal classroom" and not realistic with the demands already on our plate.

I really enjoyed being a part of this roundtable and felt like our notes and opinions were taken into account, but am still a little nervous about how it will all turn out.

The council began this process in january and are implementing it with little time for change or feedback. I am crossing my fingers that it turns out to be a positive READINESS assessment and not another kindergarten assessment for the teacher to add to their testing agendas.

I am dreaming of something that can be done before the school year starts and help evenly distribute students between classes with valuable starting information on each child.

So this leaves me wondering, What do you do to assess your kindergartner's readiness before they start school?

**P.S. sorry if this is a poorly written post. I tried to keep it coherent but I am running on 3 1/2 hours sleep...Off to bed now!

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