Education

Early Childhood & Family Support - Kindergarten Readiness Assessment

Statewide Outcome(s):

Kindergarten Readiness Assessment supports the following statewide outcome(s).

Minnesotans have the education and skills needed to achieve their goals.

Strong and stable families and communities.

Context:

Research has shown, and continues to show, that there is a critical relationship between early childhood experiences, school success, and positive life-long outcomes. One predictor of success is whether or not a student is ready for kindergarten. The Kindergarten Readiness Assessment program is a readiness assessment that is administered to a representative sample of incoming kindergarteners. The study is designed to show kindergarten readiness and track readiness trends over time.

Strategies:

To ensure the results are reliable and can be generalized to the entire population of Minnesota kindergarteners, the study uses a representative statewide sample of ten percent of all incoming kindergarteners as assessed on their kindergarten readiness skills within the first eight weeks of school. Participation by schools is voluntary.

Kindergarten teachers observe children in the classrooms and record their observations and children’s performance on 32 indicators across five domains of child development: language/literacy, mathematical thinking, personal/social; physical, and arts. Results are compiled, analyzed and given to participating school sites. Aggregate results are used to inform school administrators, teachers, parents, early childhood teachers, child care providers, policymakers, and the public about progress towards the goal of ensuring that children are ready for kindergarten. It is expected that results will be used to plan children’s transition from home to school, prepare for teacher conferences, and improve instruction and services to families.

Results:

Analysis done in Minnesota concludes that the results of the Kindergarten Readiness Study are predictive of the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) proficiency outcomes at grade three, especially in reading and math, and that kindergarteners attaining overall proficiency were at least twice as likely to exceed standards on both MCA reading and math scores in third grade compared to kindergarteners who did not attain overall proficiency. Kindergarteners not attaining overall proficiency were more than twice as likely to have been in special education or retained by third grade, even when holding constant gender, race/ethnicity, parent education, income or Individual Education Program (IEP) status compared to kindergarteners who did attain overall proficiency.

Performance Measures Notes:

Previous year data is from FY 2010 and current year data is from 2011.