Keeping Track of Kids Entering Kindergarten

A new report from California’s Children Now calls on the state to implement a comprehensive system that provides policymakers, educators and parents with better information about the skills of California’s youngsters when they enter kindergarten.

Already at least five counties in California have implemented their own systems for observing and taking note of kindergarteners’ skills. Children Now emphasizes that such observations should never have high stakes for children -- rather, they are primarily tools to help policymakers, educators, and parents improve the quality of education and other services provided to young children, both before and in kindergarten. Critically, the purpose of collecting such data isn’t just to see whether children are ready for kindergarten, but equally or even more so to ensure that elementary schools are ready to serve the children who come to them. Because these systems provide kindergarten teachers and principals with information about entering students’ strengths and gaps in their learning, schools can tailor their instruction to match children’s needs. Not only does this improve the quality of instruction that kindergarteners receive, it also helps to foster a smooth transition between pre-K and kindergarten.

We’re particularly taken with the report’s discussion of the potential of good kindergarten readiness observations to support PreK-3rd reforms by facilitating communication, collaboration and shared professional development between teachers at the pre-K and kindergarten levels.

Children Now also emphasizes that observations must consider more than children’s cognitive and early academic skills. The report calls for comprehensive approaches that pay careful attention to children’s physical well-being and motor development, social and emotional development, approaches to learning, and communication and language use, as well as cognition and general knowledge. Some states, such as Florida, have developed kindergarten readiness assessments that fail to take some of these important measures into account.

The report includes a good overview of the extent to which states currently use some form of observation system, profiles of California counties that have implemented sound systems, and features a list of steps the state must take to move towards more systematically collecting valid and reliable information on the skills and development of incoming kindergarteners.

Implementing observation systems like this costs money, and given California’s current budget and political situation, it’s unclear whether they will be introduced at the state level in the near term. Yet, such a system could actually save the state and its school districts money over the long run, by supporting more efficient early intervention and instruction at the elementary level, helping reduce rates of special education placement and catching struggling students before they fall too far behind.

California would be smart to use the data that could be collected under Children Now’s proposal in longitudinal student data systems that it – and other states -- are developing or have developed for K-12 education. As we’ve written previously, the stimulus legislation specifically requires states to have PreK-12 student longitudinal data systems, but many states have not done a good job of integrating pre-K data into their systems. Building data systems that have the capacity to include kindergarten readiness indicators, as well as information on the type of pre-K program, if any, a child attended, would be a valuable improvement on the status quo.

Finally, we’re curious how these policies relate to the larger discussion at the national level about the Obama administration’s proposed Early Learning Challenge Fund program. Information that the administration has released to date makes clear that measuring outcomes for early childhood programs will be a critical objective of the administration’s going forward. Do comprehensive, developmentally appropriate systems for assessing kindergarten readiness have a role to play here?