Pre-K students' readiness to read improves

South Hampton Roads kindergartners are beginning school better prepared to learn how to read, according to state test results.

The percentage of local children needing extra literacy instruction at the beginning of kindergarten has fallen over the past four years. In 2008, the proportion of "school ready" South Hampton Roads kindergartners rose above the Virginia average.

Fewer than one in 10 Suffolk kindergarten students needed additional help, placing the city near the state's top tier.

Educators attribute the gains to added slots in the state's prekindergarten program and a push for early childhood education in recent years. More parents are pursuing preschool programs and stressing academics prior to kindergarten, they say.

"Now that parents are understanding how important preschool is, they are getting more prepared," said Carol Johnson, a Suffolk kindergarten teacher. "Kindergarten is not Sandbox 101 anymore."

The kindergarten Phonological Awareness Literacy Screen ing, known as the PALS-K, is administered to the majority of the state's 89,000 public school kindergartners in the fall and spring.

The assessment, developed in the late 1990s by University of Virginia researchers, measures pre-literacy skills, such as recognizing letters and identifying the letters' sounds.

It has evolved into a gauge of "school readiness" in Virginia.

"We placed a great deal of importance on it because it's the only consistent measure we have," said Kathy Glazer, director of the Virginia Office of Early Childhood Development.

Test scores may be on the rise because more students are attending preschool, or because preschool programs are doing a better job of teaching beginning literacy skills, said Tim Landrum, senior scientist at U.Va.'s PALS office.

Expansion of the Virginia Preschool Initiative, the state's prekindergarten for at-risk children, may account for some of the improvement, Glazer said. Between 2004 and 2007, enrollment in the program more than doubled statewide.

Prekindergarten offerings through South Hampton Roads school divisions grew by 89 percent during that time.

Locally, Portsmouth had the biggest percentage-point decrease in children needing extra literacy instruction.

About one in five kindergartners failed to meet the PALS-K benchmarks in fall 2005. The number fell to one in eight in 2008.

"You work on something, you work on something, and all of a sudden it just breaks open," Superintendent David Stuckwisch said.

Consolidating Head Start classrooms and many of the school system's prekindergarten programs into two centers has helped, he said.

Stuckwisch also credited Portsmouth Reads. The 7-year-old literacy program encourages volunteers to share books at day care centers, holds family reading nights, and gives parents a checklist of what children need in order to be ready for kindergarten.

In Suffolk, school officials added prekindergarten classes and increased the number of workshops for parents on how to enhance a child's learning at home.

They also started a six-week summer school for children without preschool experience. The students get a taste of kindergarten and learn how to ride a bus, open a milk carton, and walk in lines down the hall.

On the program's next-to-last day in July, Jacquelyn Lawrence's students matched M&Ms to colored circles on paper and counted plastic bears as they placed them one by one into clear cups.

Lawrence handed out cards with letters on them. "If I have your letter, you need to say, 'I have it!'."

"Do I have a matching B? Do I have a C? Do we have an E?"

Gunnar Tilliman gazed uncertainly at his card. When the teacher first gave it to him, he didn't recognize the E.

Now, Gunnar held it out.

"Let's give him a hand," Lawrence said, and his classmates applauded.

Amy Jeter, (757) 446-2730, amy.jeter@pilotonline.com