Completed with the Early Childhood Coalition of Anne Arundel County

• Change of assessment tools
• New tool is less subjective (i.e. based on geography or school climate – kids are more apple to apple – new metrics have leveled the playing field in a new way)
• Need three years of the data to really determine what our new trend is
• Increase in behavioral health issues among pre-k and K students
• Change in curriculum standards (Common Core, also new Pre-K standards)
• Change in assessment means that most of our child care centers and family providers are not trained in the new tools/curriculum whereas they were better equipped to prep children against the prior assessment
• Also new assessments for 3 and 4 year olds but in AA Co only used in Special Education (Early Learning Assessment) so hard to measure progress – no peers etc.
• R4K (and ELA) are not able to be delivered in a native language
• Inequitable access to educational opportunities prior to Kindergarten depending on geographic area, SES
• Increase in parent use of drugs/substances (like heroin, also increases in coke and pot)
• Increase in drug exposed children
• Increase in public safety concerns/issues across the board
• Increasing gap between high and low SES families
• Increase in family homelessness (and discrepancies in homeless definitions) and different levels of funding
• With homeless students, they are not being counted so schools are not equipped for them when they arrive and they have a high level of need and complex needs (social emotional, trauma, etc.)
• Concentrated poverty in some schools also increases the complexity of needs for an entire student body/school culture
• Kids are often technology proficient without core academic skills (smart phones, etc.)
• Technology has also created issues with things like stillness, focus, structure, and other typical behavioral needs for school success
• Need better relationships with Housing Authority communities to identify high-need kids
• Need to expand Pre-K programs
• Other digital evolution challenges – parents are less likely to read with their small children from actual books, children don’t play games in the same way (so don’t learn the behaviors of coordinated play, etc.), bad habits around sleep, lack of human social development (social emotional development)
• Need apps to address some of the technology/academic gaps
• Need parental education for how to interact with their infants and toddlers (parent SEFEL training for new parents)
• Need better partnership between child care provider community and school system (PreK and Kindergarten)
• School social workers are Unit 1 which doesn’t allow for flexibililty to work with families on their schedules
• Negotiated agreemetns for school staff that cause challenges
• Pre-K not mandatory so attendance issues are not addressed the same as K (trend behavior)

• ECC
• AACPS
• Faith Community
• ACCC
• Child-care providers
• AACPL
• Headstart
• Health Dept.
• Partnership
• Other faith based reps
• Judy Center
• Hospitals (AAMC, BWMC, Harbor, Baltimore City)
• Health Care systems – Chase Brexton, Total
• U of MD, Medstar (oversight organizations over hospitals)
• County Transportation Dept.
• City Transportation
• County and City Government
• HACA
• HCAAC
• Community Action Agency
• Mental Health Agency/Crisis Response
• Parks & Rec
• School based mental health supports – Villa Maria, Thrive, Children’s Guild
• Parents
• Pediatricians
• LICC

• Collaboration with agencies/orgs outside the school system (ECC – support from County Exec)
• By All Means – Harvard Pilot Program
• Early Headstart/Headstart
• Pre-K
• SEFEL
• EC CRICT
• Early Childhood Mental Health Consortium
• CHAMPS
• BEST 2.0
• New DSS Parent/Child Interactive Therapy (uses EBP)
• Summer Bridge programs
• Library programs (Babies in Bloom)
• Community of Care through Parent’s Place of MD
• Home Visiting (Healthy Start)
• Community Ambassadors in schools

• By Any Means – low cost/no cost
• Expand Home Visiting Programs
• Quality child care for all! (off the wall)
• Universal Pre-K w/transportation
• Human Services Uber

The percent of composite scores for Maryland Kindergarten students based on their readiness in the domains of the Maryland Kindergarten assessment.

The group indicated a desire for the following additional data to provide additional context to the discussion:

• Would like 2016 data!
• How do we measure growth given changes to community/culture (poverty, mental health, violence)
• Drug use/abuse data
• R4K disaggregated data to look for “hot spots”
• Would love to see special ed R4K data disaggregated by disability code/diagnosis
• Attendance data for Pre-K (not currently mandatory program so not tracked and not addressed the same way)