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Program at area library helps students prepare for kindergarten

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8:12 PM Sunday, January 22, 2012

By Rick McCrabb

Staff Writer

MIDDLETOWN — Local students in Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library last year had significantly higher reading scores at kindergarten entry than children not enrolled in the free book program, data recently released revealed.

A total of 144 children who entered Middletown City Schools’ kindergarten classes last fall had participated in the Imagination Library literacy program administered by the Middletown Community Foundation.

On the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment Literacy (KRA-L) exam, they averaged a score of 18.8, which is 15 percent higher than the 16.34 average score for 378 children who had not been involved in the program.

Overall, the average student in the Middletown district scored 16.96 points on the test, according to data.

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is an international early childhood literacy program spearheaded by the entertainer to provide one free, age-appropriate, expert-selected book every month from birth to age 5 at no cost to the parents.

Middletown Community Foundation Executive Director T. Duane Gordon, coordinator for the program, said a KRA-L score of 19 is considered “adequately prepared” to enter school, and Imagination Library students neared that number.

Gordon said he was disappointed that only 28 percent of the students in the community have signed up for these free books. He said parents are missing out of this “wonderful tool” to help get their kids ready for school.

Two local kindergartner teachers at Miller Ridge Elementary School — Mary Kate Kohlhas and Becky Hackney — said they stress to parents of in-coming students the importance of reading to their children.

Exposing children to letters and pictures provides them the “basic skills they need to be successful readers,” said Kohlhas, who has taught for eight years, half of those in kindergarten. “It really connects the new knowledge they will learn in school to the old knowledge they learned at home. It makes a bridge between the two.”

Parton’s Dollywood Foundation covers the program’s administrative expenses and local sponsors pay the cost of book purchase and postage for children in their community, Gordon said.

The Middletown Community Foundation affiliate of the program provides the books to children living in the Middletown City School District and expanded to include the Monroe, Madison and Edgewood school districts last year in partnership with Women Living United, an initiative of the United Way.

Overall, the Middletown District’s KRA-L scores decreased for 2011, according to an analysis of test data by the United Way of Greater Cincinnati and Butler County Educational Service Center, falling from an average of 17.3 in 2010 to 16.96 in 2011.

However, Gordon noted the average score for Imagination Library students at 18.8 was an improvement over the 18.62 Imagination Library students averaged in 2010.

While Gordon couldn’t say the Imagination Library was the only reason for the increase, the higher scores do correlate to students being in the program for a longer period of time and receiving a greater number of books before entering kindergarten than the children from the previous year, he said.

Gordon said the books have an approximate retail value of $300,000, but they’re free to parents. He said the foundation, Women Living United and other partners spent $75,000 to provide them to children.

Middletown City Schools Superintendent Greg Rasmussen called early childhood literacy the “gate keeper for success” in the classroom.

He said it’s important for parents, and eventually the districts, to expose children to as many educational opportunities as possible. But children must be introduced at an early age, before they step into a classroom.

Parents who read to their children will appreciate the richness of their kid’s vocabulary, he said, which will make the educational experience “go a lot smoother.”

He called the Imagination Library “just phenomenal” and said it’s operated to get “a huge bang for the buck.”

Angela and Rodney McLaughlin have two daughters, Kara, 5, and Kailey, 7 months, who both participated in the book program.

Kara is a kindergartner at Central Academy, and because of her early introduction to books, she’s already is reading with first- and second-graders, her mother said.

Kailey receives a free book once a month, and the family takes time to read to her. Kara spends at least 20 minutes a night reading and writing in her journal, her mother said.

Another mother, Bridgette Dobrozsi, said her 7-year-old daughter, Jasmine, a first grader at Monroe Elementary, recently received a literacy award for reading 100 books so far this year.

“Exposing them to books is the key,” she said. “Reading is the key to everything.”

Registration forms are available at the Middletown Community Foundation office and online registration is offered at imaginationlibrary.com.

Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2842 or rmccrabb@coxohio.com.

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