Report Finds Massive Misalignments in Early Education Data

As decentralized as the K-12 educational system is in the United States, our hodgepodge of early childhood education programs takes the cake for fragmentation. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the patchwork of early education data that states maintain. In fact, according to a new report from the Early Childhood Data Collaborative (ECDC), only one state in the nation—Pennsylvania—even links its data across early educational programs like state pre-K, Head Start, and early intervention services.

Data are often the red-headed stepchildren of education programs, a less glamorous reform than the others. But data provide critical insights into the way local, state, and federal policies work, and inform the direction of future policies. Imagine being an elementary school principal, but not knowing whether your incoming kindergartners had been in any educational environment prior to age 5. Or picture a state official working to distribute funding for a state pre-K program, but who has no way to know whether a particular region is over- or underrepresented in early educational offerings. Or imagine a social worker attempting to coordinate services across agencies for the neediest students, but who is unable to determine what services those families already receive. In actuality, as we wrote in a 2012 New America report Counting Kids and Tracking Funds in Pre-K and Kindergarten, these circumstances are far from rare.

That’s why the ECDC surveys states to determine their progress in connecting data across child care and early education programs, linking child-level data from pre-K programs to the K-12 system, and in collecting the kinds of data most useful to parents, providers, and policymakers.

This year’s survey, a follow-up to its 2010 launch survey, doesn’t give the reader much faith in states’ progress so far. Forty-nine states and the District of Columbia can’t currently link their early education programs (those programs include early intervention and special education services, state pre-K, Head Start, and child care). Twenty-five states are able to connect at least two of those programs; eight have no plans to connect their data. Only nine can connect their federal or state Head Start data to their other early childhood or K-12 data. This is a result of the program’s design, providing awards to local grantees, not directly to states.

Furthermore, many states (19 of the 30 that connect early childhood and K-12 data) are still not using a unique identifier issued by the state’s K-12 system, the most reliable way to match data longitudinally. And fewer states are able to link early childhood program data to health and social services data (12 and 20 states, respectively) than are able to connect early childhood and K-12 data. That’s especially problematic because research suggests that the most effective pre-K programs are buttressed with other services, like diagnostic screening and parenting programs. The federal Head Start program, and many state pre-K programs, even requires many of these supplementary services be offered to families.

ECDC argues for 10 fundamental aspects for any state early childhood coordinated system, an excellent primer on what states should be striving for. And in the realm of good news, it seems many states are beginning to collect screening and assessment data that could be especially useful to teachers and policymakers. Thirty-six states maintain data on students’ developmental assessments (28 states), screenings (25 states), diagnostic assessments (21 states), and health screenings (16 states). Twenty-nine states collect kindergarten entry assessment data, evaluations of children’s capabilities at the start of their kindergarten school year – a powerful tool for assessing early education program needs at the state and local levels. There’s no information in the report as to whether kindergarten teachers are able to access and utilize those data in all 29 states, however.

The survey doesn’t answer all the questions, of course. Perhaps the biggest missing link is in critical information about the length (per day, per week, and/or per year) of the early childhood educational program the child is enrolled in – the “dosage” that child receives in the educational setting. It’s a critical data point for researchers, as well as for policymakers making spending decisions. The ECDC report does not explore how many states are reporting dosage for their programs. Lawmakers in Congress recognized the importance of that variable and included it as a reporting requirement in the pre-K bills introduced in the House and Senate late last year. But that bill has yet to see much progress, and it seems states may have to take the lead.

The Early Childhood Data Collaborative survey is extremely valuable for the early educational data landscape it depicts, even if it is grim. We at New America can attest to the misalignment of the early educational and K-12 systems. Each year, New America’s Federal Education Budget Project reaches out to every state to request school district-level data on their state pre-K and federal special education pre-K programs. As of last fall, only 26 states provided state pre-K enrollment data and 16 provided funding information; and, while 49 had special education pre-K funding data, only 39 had enrollment figures. Click here to check out whether your school district provided information.