New Videos Highlight the Importance of Pre-K Assessment, Data, and Curricula

We know that strengthening pre-K measurement tools, data systems, curricula, and instructional supports can play a critical role in improving kindergarten readiness outcomes for children, especially Black and Latino children and children experiencing poverty. However, these concepts are complex and can be difficult to explain to someone unfamiliar with common ECE terminology.

Today, we’re releasing three videos that briefly summarize the importance of assessment, data, and curricula in improving outcomes for children enrolled in pre-K and their families. Our hope is that these videos provide easy-to-understand explanations about the importance of improving pre-K outcomes and spark conversations about the best way forward.

Key Takeaways:

• When done right, assessments help teachers support each student based on their individual strengths and needs.

• Discrimination based on race, home language, and family income level have led to opportunity gaps for many young children even before they reach kindergarten. Strengthening pre-K assessments can help target interventions to close these opportunity gaps.

• When programs share regular information about children’s strengths and needs, families can support learning and development more easily at home.

• As more children gain access to pre-K, we need to strengthen existing assessment tools. Better tools will help teachers provide high-quality learning experiences for all young children, especially Black and Latino children and children experiencing poverty.

Key Takeaways:

• In early childhood education, data can tell us how many child care programs a community needs, whether there are enough educators for those programs, and how to support them. Data can also help us understand each child’s strengths and challenges as they grow.

• Although pre-K programs gather data, it is often siloed, meaning that one part of the system can’t see data from another part. This leads to a lack of communication among the many people who support children and families.

• Better data means measuring what matters, and using those measurements for good. Without reliable data, states have a harder time identifying areas of need, making better policies, and improving the quality of pre-K programs.

• Better data can also help ensure that kids receive the resources they deserve throughout their childhood and into adulthood. States are building data systems that collect and analyze information throughout children’s entire educational careers, from birth through high school graduation and beyond.

• If states improve the collection and use of data in both horizontal and vertical data systems, leaders can more confidently, efficiently, and effectively enhance the services that children and families need.

Key Takeaways:

• It’s important that a pre-K curriculum, which is like a playbook that guides teachers and ensures kids are learning at the right skill level, honors the cultures and languages of the community. Pre-K students in the United States are more diverse than ever before.

• Many young children are learning from a pre-K curriculum that doesn’t recognize the many strengths that diversity brings to the classroom.

• Young kids need a curriculum that is relevant to their everyday lives, one in which their identities, cultures, and languages of their communities are reflected.

• A strong curriculum addresses the many aspects of learning, including physical and social skills, the way students think and feel, and the way they communicate and understand their world.

• A culturally relevant, high-quality curriculum can help ensure that children get the maximum benefit from their pre-K year.

For more information about our work related to improving pre-K outcomes, visit our collection page.