BIRTH - 5YRS
By 2018, 75 percent of children will enter a Columbus City Schools’ kindergarten ready to succeed.
What we know:
34 percent of kindergarten children who entered Columbus City Schools in 2010 scored in the lowest band of the state readiness assessment. This signals an immediate need for intervention services.
Why this matters:
“Reading proficiently by the end of the third grade can be a make-or-break benchmark in a child’s educational development” (Annie E. Casey Foundation). The research indicates that 75 percent of the students who are not reading at grade level in 3rd grade will remain poor readers in high school. Poor readers often drop-out, do not graduate, or if they enter a post-secondary program, they will require remedial services.
What Learn4Life will do:
- Identify promising practices for early literacy development
- Work with community partners to increase the number of early learning and academic assistance programs for PreK children
- Align promising practices with existing programs
- Work with agencies to develop continuous improvement strategies to increase child success
- Assist agencies and programs in tracking performance toward the goal
Healthy Weight 0-5
In 2012, the Cardinal Health Foundation awarded Learn4Life a project management grant for the Healthy Weight 0-5 Initiative.
Vision of the Initiative:
Columbus is the healthiest place in Ohio for children and their families to live.
Goal of the Initiative:
Central Ohio children enter school at healthy weights.
According the 2009 Center for Disease Control, nationally 1 and 3 children are obese or overweight before their 5th birthday. One and seven, low-income, preschool-aged children are obese or have a body mass index over the 95%. More than 36 percent of 3rd graders in Ohio are overweight or obese (2009). Columbus City Schools reported that in the 2011/2012 school year 28% of kindergarten students were overweight or obese. Of those students, 14% were obese. Studies show that childhood obesity is linked to long-term health problems, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, bone and joint issues, sleep apnea, and heart disease, just to name a few. Obesity is associated with increased school absenteeism and poorer school performance. Studies also show a correlation to child’s weight and academic performance.
This initiative is focused on touchpoints that support young families’ access to child care, health care, access to food, fitness and the interrelationships between them. Learn4Life and Cardinal Health are building on existing resources, evaluating progress and working toward a common language and priorities. As project manager, Learn4Life is committed to being a facilitating agency to improve weights of children ages birth to 5 so that they are ready for kindergarten.
The Healthy Weight initiative will consistently focus on the following behaviors that will result in healthy weights:
- Reduce sweetened beverages
- Increase fruits and vegetable consumption
- Serving appropriate servings
- Limit screen time
- Increase physical activity and motor skill development
With Cardinal Health’s funding, L4L will manage this initiative serving as a backbone organization which is critical for collective impact.
Ready 4 Success
The purpose of the Ready 4 Success strategy is to help early learning centers support continuous improvement and data driven decision-making through a shared plan for common outcome measurement, data alignment, and reporting. This effort aligns with the Learn4Life Learning Partner Dashboard strategy.
This past spring, Learn4Life, in collaboration with Action for Children, Learning Circle Education Services, and nine early education and care agencies, worked together to understand how well their children are performing with early reading skills before they enter kindergarten. Together we learned a lot and together we will continue to work to improve outcomes!
The Problem: Far too many children are entering into Columbus City Schools without the vocabulary and early reading skills that are critical to school success.
The Solution: ready 4 success
What is ready 4 success? A new community initiative that aims to partner with center-based early education and childcare programs to help them achieve school readiness goals for the children they serve.
What Are the Benefits to My Program? Programs that enter into a Partnership with Learn4Life will:
• Be part of a community of early education and childcare programs that will learn with and from each other about effective strategies to improve the school readiness outcomes of the children they serve;
• Receive child level and aggregate information about how their children are progressing toward the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment-Literacy (KRA-L) measure;
• Receive KRA-L scores on the children they have served that enter into Columbus City Schools;
• Receive professional development and technical assistance from a Literacy Coach for program improvement;
• Receive assistance in the understanding and use of data as a continuous improvement process strategy for program improvement and the selection of instructional strategies to meet the needs of young learners.
What Do I Need to Do to Sign-Up? Your agency/program must sign a Partnership Agreement and provide Learn4Life with basic information about your classroom (location); number of children served and; the degrees and experiences of your teachers. In addition, you will be required to obtain parent permission in order for Learn4Life to track child data over time.
Who Do I Call for More Information? Please contact Learn4Life at (614) 754-1413 or Sandra Miller to learn more about this exciting opportunity.
ready 4 success documents are available for download here.