NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Nickerson-South Hutchinson Superintendent Curtis Nightingale notes that the expansion of child care and preschool slots across the county is one way that all of the districts in the area are trying to make sure kids are ready for kindergarten.
"One of the things schools are being currently graded on by the state is the level of kindergarten readiness, that students when they come into kindergarten, you know are they prepared for school," Nightingale said. "If you think about that, you know holding schools accountable for that, if we don't have some sort of a preschool programming or something developed, we're dependent upon the families to know what their kid needs to be able to do. Are they prepared to make sure the kid's ready? It behooves us as a district as a system to to create something to help those families."
School districts are measured on a lot of factors that they can't control.
"State assessments, they're constantly changing those those actual exams that we provide those kids," Nightingale said. "It's a one-day one-shot test and then we're held accountable based on a kid's ability to be successful on that particular exam, regardless of where they're at in the curriculum, regardless of how strong of a test taker they are."
It's also important to know that standards in Kansas are high.
"The state of Kansas sets a higher cut mark than pretty much any other state in the United States and yet we're compared to those other states," Nightingale said. "We hear a lot about well Florida's education system is so great. If you look at the nationally normed tests Florida rates near the bottom and Kansas rates near the top, but no one wants to hear that when we start comparing state assessment scores, because each state is allowed to set their own cut score."
Knowing how to measure kids against what they are capable of and not what everyone is capable of is part of the Kansans Can initiative where students can be treated as individuals and not just as members of a group.