It’s not only Georgia’s public school and university students who are “racing to the top” using a $400 million federal grant over the next four years, so are the youngest children, before they even start school.

Half of Georgia’s Race to the Top grant will be used toward statewide programming, including initiatives to benefit children from birth to age 5.

Race to the Top is a competitive school reform program under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Although 46 states applied for the money, only a dozen were awarded funds for innovative proposals to turn schools around and improve educational quality.

Georgia is one of just six states whose applications included initiatives aimed at children before they begin kindergarten, said Holly Robinson, commissioner for the Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning, also called Bright from the Start. That department is in charge of licensing and standards for day cares as well as the Georgia Pre-K Program and will partner with the state Department of Human Resources and the state Department of Education to focus on this age group.

“It was very intelligent and forward-thinking to have included (early childhood) in Race to the Top,” said Julie Moore, executive director of the Bibb County nonprofit Education First. She said that in recent years Bibb County has seen about 200 children arriving for kindergarten each year unprepared — a number that repeatedly parallels the number of students who fail ninth grade.

“We are ahead of some other states in recognizing that age 0 to 5 is one of those untouched areas, and recognizing that if children are being read to and hearing better vocabulary, that makes a huge difference when they walk in the door to kindergarten,” Moore said.

State officials say no decision has been made about what proportion of the funding will go to infants and toddlers.

According to the state’s grant application, early childhood initiatives that would be added or expanded using Race to the Top money include:

n Creating a uniform system for assessing classroom quality from preschool through third grade;

n Improving transitions for children by better coordinating family services (such as health screenings and parental support programs), day cares, pre-K and elementary schools; and

n An initiative to prepare children from birth to age 8 to be able to read at grade level by third grade. Georgia is leading this initiative of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the charitable foundation of the family that started Georgia-based UPS.

Race to the Top would provide more training to teachers, counselors and others who provide extra support to families.

In many cases, the Race to the Top money would expand or build upon existing programs funded by the state or by stimulus funds.

For example, Bright from the Start has used stimulus funds to provide intensive training to low-performing day cares; define learning standards for the youngest children and Georgia Pre-K; and study the alignment of standards from birth through elementary school. A new student data system will allow kindergarten teachers to look at the records of students enrolled in Georgia Pre-K.

“We’re really looking at enhanced language and literacy, particularly little children because that’s where you have vocabulary building and brain development,” Robinson said. “Georgia is positioned to take a national lead on this.”

The Casey grant, a decade-long initiative, also involves multiple state departments and is being coordinated by Human Resources Department Commissioner B.J. Walker, who is an Annie E. Casey fellow.

Walker said researchers helped the state identify “key transactions” that will help get kids reading at grade level. Skills related to oral language seem to be especially lacking among poor children, who on average have heard 30 million fewer words than the average middle-class child when they enter kindergarten, she said.

Under the grant, the state is launching new initiatives and studying the outcomes in five school systems across the state: Atlanta, Chatham County and Polk County, as well as Dublin and Laurens County in Middle Georgia.

Walker said these systems either had an existing focus on reading or could serve as an active partner in such a campaign. She said she expects to have a plan for expanding some successful strategies from these counties to the rest of the state by next fall.

“A lot is going to be focused on summer preparation, preschool and kindergarten through third grade, and getting students to really work on vocabulary expansion,” said Dublin school Superintendent Chuck Ledbetter. “We know we have a vocabulary gap with students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.”

The Casey initiatives include offering summer school to children who have spent a year in pre-K but don’t seem ready for kindergarten, and to kids from high-risk communities who were unable to get pre-K slots, Walker said.

Ledbetter said that as part of the program, Dublin also plans to expand its Saturday parent academies to reach more parents at more grade levels.

Foster children would be targeted for extra educational support, and foster parents would help the state penetrate the world of informal child care, such as grandparents and family friends who care for young children in their homes. The state hopes to figure out ways to increase the amount of oral language these children in informal settings hear before they start school.

“Part of this pilot is figuring out how to get at some of these things that have been hard to get at in the past,” Walker said.

Demme McManus, principal of Susie Dasher Elementary School in Dublin, said she thinks the most productive aspect of the effort might be the increased communication with Georgia Pre-K about what kindergarteners need to know when they arrive at school. Susie Dasher Elementary serves all the kindergarteners and first graders in Dublin.

“The pre-K guidelines are more experimental learning, and we’re more structured on letters and numbers,” McManus said. She said less than half of kindergartners who attend state funded pre-K are able to pass a standardized test of basic vocabulary and concept recognition when they start school.

She said Georgia also has applied for another Casey grant that would offer innovative summer school to children struggling with reading. These school systems would use well-tested reading programs that are usually available only through pricey private companies.

This possibility is what Jerry Hatcher, superintendent of Laurens County schools, says he’s most excited about.

“This could give us money for assessments to help us better identify kids who are struggling and their specific weaknesses, then, hopefully, use those summer interventions,” he said. “Some things we just can’t afford on our own anymore.”

Ledbetter and Hatcher said they aren’t certain why their school systems were chosen to be part of the Casey launch. But Ledbetter said he thinks that because Dublin is an average school system, its successes can be easily replicated elsewhere.

“That’s why we think what we’re doing has significance across the state and all over the country,” he said.

To contact writer S. Heather Duncan, call 744-4225.