One by one, young kids in Floyd County are graduating from their pre-K program, but it’s not traditional preschool, it’s all done online.
Jackson is one of about 100 students graduating from the home-based UPSTART program. He also attends an in-class preschool. His mom, Danielle Reynolds, was eager to try something new with him so he would be prepared for kindergarten.
“My daughter, she didn’t have a rough start, but she wasn’t maybe as prepared as I would have liked,” Reynolds says.
New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated Schools is the first district in the state to pilot UPSTART through a federal grant. The Waterford Institute in Utah develops the software, which New Albany schools also use as a reading intervention tool for K through 2nd grade classes.
That’s why Tony Duffy, the director of elementary education, says he was expecting positive results.
“We jumped at the chance because we saw what Waterford did for other students, and we knew we had an opportunity to do that with our students that are coming in,” Duffy says.
Before beginning the program, kids take an online assessment. Then, with their parents, the kids use the program at home, 15 minutes a day, five days a week, for nine months. They take the same assessment once they’ve completed the program.
Claudia Miner, director of UPSTART, says the results of the follow up exam are compared to the exam each kid took before they began the program.
“And you might not think that was really long enough for children to learn much, but the software is so individualized that it teaches the children exactly what they need to know before they move on to the next things,” Miner says.
Currently more than 27,000 low-income four year olds don’t have access to high-quality pre-K in Indiana. Several counties have limited options or even no option.
The Indiana General Assembly is putting $1 million toward online pre-K, and it’s not exactly clear yet how the money will be distributed. Continue Reading