Local Pre-K Program Celebrates Texas School Ready! Certification

PRLog (Press Release) – Oct 19, 2009 – Kids R Kids of Las Colinas is inviting everyone to help celebrate this Friday evening, October 23, 2009. It recently received notification that its two Pre-K classrooms are Texas School Ready! certified. There were a total of the 3 classrooms in Irving/Coppell area and 2,084 classrooms from all across Texas that received Texas School Ready! certification through a state-funded evaluation system led by the Children's Learning Institute (CLI) at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

The Texas School Ready! certification system was created as a result of the Texas Senate Bill 23 in 2003. The purpose of the certification system was to identify programs that were successful in integrating quality instructional practices and actually tracking the children’s scores who left those programs to measure success in areas of reading and social skills when they went to kindergarten. Texas School Ready! certifies preschool classrooms including: private preschool centers, child care centers, public PK programs and Head Start centers that effectively prepare their students for kindergarten.

"This certification recognizes the strong leadership of local community leaders in implementing the Texas School Ready! Project and in taking a proven, focused approach to ensure that all children, including those at-risk, receive the support they need to enter school ready to learn," said Susan Landry, Ph.D., Albert and Margaret Alkek Endowed Chair in Early Childhood Education and executive director of CLI at the UT Health Science Center. "This project continues to succeed for children because of the support of not only parents, teachers and community leaders," said Landry, "but the support of our elected and appointed leaders in Austin."

Kids R Kids of Las Colinas entered the program in 2007 and has seen drastic changes in their preschool program as a result. The biggest change by far is the children’s abilities to demonstrate pre-reading skills. The children are more able to recite both the letters by recognition and sound, begin to identify initial sounds, blend sound to read familiar words, create rhyme patterns, and separate words into syllables. They also demonstrate stronger writing skills, as well as knowledge of how print is read and used.  The best part is the children are having fun with their teachers while learning all these new skills because their teachers made every activity fun and purposeful.  Mrs. Zelda Newsom-Brown, who has worked at Kids R Kids Las Colinas for nine years said,” Since I have used the C.I.R.C.L.E. model in my classroom I have seen the children enjoying learning. I have also had an increased number of children leaving for kindergarten that are able to read or well on their way, and that is amazing!”


Kids R Kids will be incorporating an awards ceremony to celebrate this accomplishment on Friday, October 23rd during their Fall Festival which runs from 4:30-7:30. The community has been invited to join in the fun. There will be plenty of free children’s activities including face painting, balloon artist, two bounce houses, petting zoo and much more. For more details about the Fall Festival or the Texas School Ready! ™ Certification you may contact them at (972) 831-0010 or www.krklascolinas.com