{"id":379,"date":"2011-12-23T09:20:46","date_gmt":"2011-12-23T09:20:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/?p=379"},"modified":"2025-03-17T09:21:21","modified_gmt":"2025-03-17T09:21:21","slug":"creating-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/creating-risk\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating Risk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Minnesota state officials recently released the Minnesota Readiness Study showing that children of color and children who live in poverty are \u201cless likely to be considered ready for kindergarten\u201d[1]<\/a>\u00a0than their White and middle class counterparts.\u00a0 As we try to understand, I want to focus attention on the notion of what it means to be \u201cready\u201d for kindergarten.<\/p>\n

According to a 2010 report[2]<\/a>\u00a0summary, the Minnesota Department of Education defines readiness as:<\/p>\n

The skills, knowledge, behaviors, and accomplishments that children should know and be able to do as they enter kindergarten in the following areas of child development: personal and social development; language and literacy; mathematical thinking; physical development; the arts.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

Although I understand given the pressure to produce a highly educated and qualified citizenry that there is such emphasis of skill and knowledge development for five year olds; I do believe that these indicators, don\u2019t tell the full story.\u00a0 Not only that, but I am even more alarmed when last year\u2019s summary goes on to \u201c[c]onclud[e] that the result of the School Readiness Study are predictive of the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) proficiency outcomes at grade three, especially in reading and math\u2026\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

Essentially this report, like so many others like it, indicates that poor children and children of color not only enter school behind, but are more likely\u00a0not to<\/em>\u00a0catch up to their White and middle class peers even by third grade.\u00a0 To go further, many education reports like these and the subsequent media coverage contribute to a narrative and mental model that lead people to believe that it is the fault of the parents, the home environment, the culture, or circumstances that no one can control that leads to such disparate outcomes.\u00a0 This is implied due to the emphasis that\u00a0these kids\u00a0<\/em>are behind\u00a0even before\u00a0<\/em>they enter school.\u00a0 However, for a moment, let\u2019s suppose we take this at face value and agree children enter into kindergarten at different levels of \u201creadiness\u201d in terms of their skills and knowledge.\u00a0 So what?\u00a0 To me, the obvious solution is to teach them the skills they need to be \u201cready\u201d for kindergarten.\u00a0 Is that such a radical notion?\u00a0 It is true that learning accumulates with some skills building from others, but does that mean that once behind, always behind?\u00a0 I would guess that in a country like our own that prides itself on upward mobility and the self-making of each citizen, the rather obvious conclusion\u00a0should\u00a0<\/em>be no.\u00a0 Yet, that\u2019s\u00a0exactly\u00a0<\/em>what happens.\u00a0 Why?<\/p>\n

To answer this, I go back to one of the first texts I read as a graduate student, Shirley Brice Heath\u2019s\u00a0Ways with Words\u00a0<\/em>(1983)[5]<\/a>.\u00a0 She studied three communities, Roadville, a predominantly White working class community; Trackton, a predominantly Black working class community; and the Townspeople, a more racially mixed middle-class community.\u00a0 She examined the orientation and use of language that each community exhibited in their day-to-day interactions amongst each other, and especially with their young children and looked at how their relationship with literacy and language related to their children\u2019s degrees of success in school.\u00a0 Heath found that each set of students entered with different relationships, understanding, skills, and knowledge of literacy and that school heavily favored the orientation and skills that the Townspeople\u2019s children brought with them to the detriment to the other students.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t that children from Trackton and Roadville\u00a0didn\u2019t know<\/em>, but that they had\u00a0different<\/em>\u00a0ways<\/em>\u00a0with words.\u00a0 Specifically Heath (1983) says, \u201cThe school\u2019s approach to reading and learning establishes decontextualized skills as foundational in the hierarchy of academic skills,\u201d (p. 353) which indicates the need to reassess\u00a0how<\/em>\u00a0school approaches such skills and knowledge and examines\u00a0who<\/em>\u00a0is privileged in this process and who is marginalized.\u00a0 Without this understanding and without taking the time to examine the taken-for-granted knowledge and skills teachers bring from\u00a0their own<\/em>\u00a0homes<\/em>\u00a0and then perpetuate in the classroom, the achievement gap will continue to exist.\u00a0 As she says,<\/p>\n

The school is not a neutral objective arena; it is an institution which has the goal of changing people\u2019s values, skills, and knowledge bases.\u00a0 Yet some portions of the population, such as the townspeople, bring with them to school linguistic and cultural capital accumulated through hundreds of thousands of occasions for practicing the skills and espousing the values the schools transmit\u2026<\/p>\n

In any case, unless the boundaries between classrooms and communities can be broken, and the flow of cultural patterns between them encouraged, the schools will continue to legitimate and reproduce communities of townspeople who control and limit the potential progress of other communities and who themselves remain untouched by other values and ways of life (p. 367-369).<\/p>\n

My point is that such reports, while sounding the alarm are indicating all the wrong sources for the achievement gap.\u00a0 It is not that students enter kindergarten deficit of skills, it\u2019s that kindergarten in its current form is not created to recognize and honor the skills children bring with them and utilize\u00a0those<\/em>\u00a0skills as a means of learning others.\u00a0 It\u2019s a lack of knowledge, interest, and skills built into the institution itself that fails to welcome all its citizenry with the same equitable embrace as those who\u00a0best<\/em>\u00a0exhibit the institution\u2019s own ideologies and ways of knowing and being.\u00a0 Until we change\u00a0that<\/em>, I believe we will continue to create risk where none actually exists.<\/p>\n

[1]\u00a0See Tom Weber, \u201cAchievement gap exists for kids even before kindergarten<\/a>\u201d\u00a0Minnesota Public Radio.<\/em><\/p>\n

[2]\u00a0Due to technical errors, the report from this year is inaccessible online; therefore, I used the summaries and results from last year\u2019s report, which makes many of the same points.<\/p>\n

[3]\u00a0See School Readiness Study Summary found\u00a0HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[4]\u00a0Also see the School Readiness Study Summary.<\/p>\n

[5]\u00a0Heath,\u00a0Ways with Words<\/em>\u00a0Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.<\/p>\n

NOTE: This blog was originally published on the West Wind Education Policy Inc., on December 23, 2011.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Minnesota state officials recently released the Minnesota Readiness Study showing that children of color and children who live in poverty are \u201cless likely to be considered ready for kindergarten\u201d[1]\u00a0than their White and middle class counterparts.\u00a0 As we try to understand, I want to focus attention on the notion of what it means to be \u201cready\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":381,"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions\/381"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}