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Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Students in the State-Funded K-Plus Program are About to Start An Extra 25 Days of School

By Gabriela C. Guzman
Copyright © 2007 Albuquerque Journal; Journal Staff Writer
    SANTA FE— Thousands of the state's youngest students won't get much of a summer vacation this year.
    As soon as the beginning of next month, some kindergarteners through third-graders will hang up their pool towels and pick up their backpacks.
    Those children in high-poverty schools will spend 25 extra days in class on top of the regular 180-day school year.
    It's part of a state-funded program to help diminish the achievement gap between children of different racial and economic groups.
    "We are not in school long enough," said state Rep. Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, and sponsor of the kindergarten-plus legislation.
    In 2003, the initiative received $400,000 for four pilot school districts to add more days for kindergarteners in high-poverty schools. The idea was to see if giving these children a jump-start in kindergarten would lead to improved academic performance, Stewart said.
    Evaluations of the program since its inception have found that children in kindergarten-plus classrooms left prepared for first grade, even though they entered kindergarten behind in skills.
    "We need to do this with all our classrooms," Stewart said.
    State lawmakers this year approved $7.5 million to expand the program through third grade in schools that have 85 percent of their students receiving a free or reduced lunch— an indicator of the poverty in the area.
    Qualifying districts still have to apply through the New Mexico Public Education Department.
    Teachers in participating schools, such as Santo Domingo Elementary, see the results of the program with their students.
    "Talk to each other," says Mary Aguilar during a class session at the school in May as she hands out five flash cards, in no particular order, to the mostly 5-year-olds sitting on a rug.
    The kindergarteners hop to their feet, get into a huddle and begin sounding out the words to make a sentence.
    The huddle turns into a line with the students forming this sentence: "she Is at the zoo."
    "Where is the capital letter," Aguilar asks the children, who regroup and quickly shuffle to make the correct sentence: "Is she at the zoo?"
    Progress made by these children is astonishing, considering a majority of Santo Domingo's kindergarteners did not know the letters in their names or the sounds of words at the onset of school last summer when they started in the K-plus program, said Christina Esquibel, one of the school's reading coaches.
    They started last July and will resume class this July.
    "We want to keep those gains," Esquibel said.
    All of the school's 147 students come from nearby Santo Domingo Pueblo, located 25 miles south of Santa Fe, and, for many, their first language is Keresan.
    The school plans to expand its kindergarten-plus program to the first grade this summer.
    Going to school early is old hat for kindergarteners at Valley View Elementary School in Las Cruces. It was one of the original school sites for kindergarten-plus in 2003.
    Coupled with the school's intensive reading program, the results have been impressive. More kindergarteners from 2003 are reading above grade level than below grade level, said Jamie Jones, Valley View's principal for six years.
    Before K-plus, the school struggled with low achievement, she said.
    "It's gold in the hands of the right people," Jones said of bringing disadvantaged students earlier in the school year. "We've got to hit them early, to prevent a lot of failure in the future."
    While students might boohoo the loss of their summer, district administrators are ecstatic at the chance of getting more time in the classroom with students.
    "For the kids that don't have anything to do at home, school is the best thing for them," said Elizabeth Maruffo, director of elementary instruction for Las Cruces Public Schools.
    "They get bored after a couple of weeks (at home)," Maruffo adds.