Preschool efforts succeeding in Camden

Logos for Rutgers and other local universities are taped to the doors of many of Camden's preschool classrooms. The 3- and 4-year-olds inside don't yet know how to read, but they know what college is.

In Camden, where high schools had a 53 percent graduation rate last year and where fewer than 10 percent of high school students were deemed college-ready in a recent study, reshaping expectations is one of the biggest challenges for educators.

Many of the district's students think of higher education as unattainable, if they think of it at all, said Katrina McCombs, director of Camden's early-childhood education program. So those who teach the city's youngest have started trying to intervene before those assumptions take hold.

"The college plan begins here," McCombs said as she walked the bright halls of Camden's Early Childhood Development Center last week. "We're trying to plant that seed early on, so it's part of their vocabulary."

In the quest to turn around what has long been New Jersey's lowest-performing district, incremental progress is crucial, administrators say. And though recent state test scores revealed little improvement in the performance of grade school and high school students, few would deny that pre-K in Camden is a success.

About 91 percent of the city's 3- and 4-year-olds are enrolled, McCombs said. The district has filled 95 percent of its 2,600 available slots - the highest number ever reached in Camden. Enrollment is also growing in the private sector, and private preschools have added at least five classrooms in recent months.

The district program is free and funded by the state under a 1998 Supreme Court order that mandated early-childhood education in poor communities throughout the state; Camden received $28 million for it last year.

But, unlike in the rest of the state-funded district, children in Camden's early-childhood classes improved in literacy and math by about 20 percent from 2010 to 2012, according to district officials. The program has been lauded by the state Department of Education - even as student test scores in higher grades have remained flat.

"The question is, what is happening after pre-K?" McCombs said. "How do we build from there?"

At the Early Childhood Development Center, an expansive building in East Camden that houses the majority of the city's pre-K classes, the walls were decorated with paper turkeys and other cheerful Thanksgiving decorations. McCombs passed sunny, clean classrooms stocked with interactive smartboards, laptops, art supplies, building blocks, and more.

"At the end of the day, we are trying to create a buffer for these children," said McCombs, a Camden native who has worked for the district since 1991. "So that if things are difficult for them at home, it won't stand in their way in the future, and that they'll see education as a way to overcome that."

Loretta Gooden, president of the District Advisory Council, said most parents can't help but be impressed with the district's early-childhood classes.

"They have an excellent program," she said. "The kids are very involved, very excited. I know a mother whose daughter will start crying if she says they're going to be late."

Superintendent Paymon Rouhanifard, hired last year after the state took over Camden's schools, said pre-K helps children socialize and adjust to the routine of going to school. The next step is to strengthen the academics, including making sure they know their letters and numbers before they get to kindergarten.

He has put McCombs in charge of delineating the curriculum between pre-K and kindergarten, he said, and in coming years she will be asked to do the same for elementary-school grade levels. Students' progress will be tracked from year to year so educators can identify positive - or negative - trends.

"Those assessments should start to show that we are turning a corner," McCombs said.

Rouhanifard has drawn criticism from parents who question his lack of experience as a superintendent, and from teachers who fear he intends to dismantle the public schools in favor of charters. He has spent much of his first year on the job talking with students and their parents, hearing feedback and discussing long-range plans for the district.

In recent weeks, he has met with families at each of the district's schools, using the latest round of state test results as a springboard for conversations about setting big-picture goals for students, like attending college or vocational schools. Many families might view high school graduation as the end point, but jobs in Camden remain scarce, he said, and the choices for high school graduates are limited.

"We are working really hard to set expectations higher for students and higher for families," Rouhanifard said. "For decades, the test scores would come in, but there was no deeper discussion beyond that about what those could mean. Part of our discussions now are, what are the life outcomes associated with these scores?"