Empowering Change

In Franklin County, only 43% of children are ready for kindergarten by the time they graduate preschool. “Kindergarten readiness” is used by educators to describe the set of skills and tools a child will need to be successful as they move into kindergarten. In Ohio, emphasis is on ensuring a child is physically, socially and emotionally ready to participate in school. This means, in addition to academic skills like mastering foundational literacy and mathematic skills, other abilities such as keeping hands to ourselves, cooperating and playing with others, communicating needs effectively, using the restroom independently, and properly cutting with scissors are also important.

While there are several measures to assess kindergarten readiness (local school districts will administer a formal assessment before enrolling children in kindergarten), SproutFive uses six domains of development (social-emotional, physical, language, cognition, literacy, and math) of Teaching Strategies Gold (TSG) to determine if a preschooler is ready to move on. To be deemed ready for kindergarten, a child must meet or exceed developmental expectations in all six domains. Using the TSG, 99% of our students were determined to be kindergarten ready.