Software Helps Soften Landing in Kindergarten

The boy waves his hands excitedly, urging his friend to look--”Mira, mira,” he says. The two watch a beefy cartoon character on the computer screen pull a crank on a machine that extrudes the letter A.

In a classroom at the nonprofit center El Centrito de La Colonia in Oxnard, an instructor watches as a girl named Abigail repeatedly writes her name in pencil. And across the room, another aide watches as two children dab sponges shaped like the number 1 into globs of paint and imprint the number onto construction paper.

The center offers special instruction to help 4- and 5-year-olds in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods prepare for school. Children here use computer software to learn the alphabet and also receive special attention from instructors.

“We have to take responsibility for helping the children,” said the program’s executive director, Luann Rocha, who worried that a number of children in the neighborhood would enter kindergarten unprepared to learn to read. “The schools can’t do it all by themselves and the families can’t do it all by themselves.”

In its second year, the program has received praise from parents and outside researchers. Though the results are preliminary, they show “the program has some potential of real promise,” said Mildred Murray-Ward, head of the Cal Lutheran University team studying the program.

Results that were particularly encouraging were from the Early School Assessment tests, used by a number of public schools to gauge reading development.

The El Centrito children, mainly from La Colonia, were tested against a group of children who live in the same area, but attend two public preschools. The tests showed that the El Centrito children, who started at about the same levels as the control group, outperformed them in visual and auditory skills by the end of the program.

“They achieved enough more that it is worth caring about,” Murray-Ward said.

The test, however, was administered only to those with a strong command of English--three out of 15 children.

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While less dramatic, results from another test, the Pre-Language Assessment Scales exam, also were encouraging, Murray-Ward said.

That test, which measures language skills in English and Spanish and compares children across the state, found scores for children in the El Centrito program held steady against others tested over the nine-month term of the program.

Murray-Ward also is encouraged by the success of software created by the Waterford Institute, a Salt Lake City-based group that tries to create equal educational opportunities through technology. Unlike many computer-based classroom tools, the program is actively used by students, she said.

“All of them got exposure and they got a lot of it,” Murray-Ward said. Even those with limited English used it continually, she said.

She said it’s too early to draw firm conclusions about the El Centrito program but a clearer picture will emerge with further testing.

The program began in January 1997 with grants totaling $206,000, mostly from the James Irvine and Ventura County Community foundations.

All the children in the first two groups learned to write their names, recite the alphabet and distinguish words. “Those are all tremendously important,” Rocha said.

In higher-income families, children often have more access to books and have college-educated parents who read to them, the group’s organizers said. The group worried that students from the poorer La Colonia area would be at a disadvantage once they started kindergarten.

Students who aren’t at grade level in reading skills when they start kindergarten could face problems, Rocha said.

A number of parents, such as Sylvia Chavez, praised the program.

“All the mothers are happy with the program,” said Chavez, whose 4-year-old, Efren, attends the center.

“The kids are entertained, they’ve learned their colors and their letters,” she said in Spanish.

In addition, the program has really helped her son pick up some other useful skills he will need in kindergarten.

“He’s the only child at home,” she said. “But now he knows how to share.”