6. Six Steps for Educators and Systems Leaders to Strengthen Transitions

When early learning experiences are connected from before birth and up through third grade, children and their families can more easily transition into pre-K, kindergarten, and the early elementary grades. Improving transitions for children and families requires careful planning, effective policies and practices, and sustainable funding. Educators can establish practices that put families more at ease, but the planning must begin well before the first day of school. On day one, teachers and schools should already have enough information to begin tailoring instruction, strategies, and environments to meet the needs of every student.

Children and families need activities that engage them early and provide them with information and comfort as they begin the school year. When enacting policy, state and local decision-makers and administrators must address the systems that support young children’s learning and development. Conditions must ensure consistent learning environments and experiences across settings and sectors before school, in kindergarten, and beyond.

Educators across the early learning continuum are key to making this happen, but so are state and local education officials, as they set policy goals to enable effective and supportive transitions. The work of states and school districts to align expectations, curricula, assessments, instructional strategies, accountability, family engagement, learning environments data, and professional learning may be less visible to children and families but is no less significant. In fact, these systems that enable the conditions for a strong and comprehensive P–3 continuum are the most critical for creating seamless transitions.

We propose six steps to establishing effective and supportive transitions policy at the state and local levels. Progressing through these steps must begin with a leader who is responsible for action and accountability for success. Too often the transition into kindergarten (as well as each grade thereafter) is no one individual’s responsibility or it is the responsibility of an individual without the authority to enact transformational change.

Identifying a transitions self-assessment tool and taking stock of current transitions activities at the state and local level is the place to start. A number of self-assessment tools exist for this purpose, such as New York’s transition effectiveness assessment tool. (New York’s tool was used to develop the self-assessment tool that we used with districts this year.) Results of the transitions self-assessment can provide an overview of current efforts as well as areas where more focused work is needed. This self-assessment should also include listening to families, prioritizing children and families who are furthest from opportunity, and tailoring investments to address structural inequities embedded in state and local systems.

Because the transitions process will be impacted by the lingering effects of the pandemic, transitions team members should also consider the state of children, families, and educators discussed in section 4 and answer the guiding questions posed in section 5 of this toolkit.

To ensure that children and families experience transitions that meet their needs, it is important for a range of interested parties to be involved in the policy design process. Policy must be grounded in the experiences of those who will be most affected by it. While classroom teachers play a crucial role in successful transitions, anyone who is in the life of a child, family, or teacher during these critical years of development can play a role in ensuring that families and educators have the information they need. Below is a list of those who might help design policy to deliver effective transitions:

The next step is creating plans for improvement. While policy change, support for policy implementation, or updated policy guidance is the goal, these things can take time. It’s also important to consider what can be accomplished in the short term. For instance, a state or district could opt to organize listening sessions to gather information and ideas from families and educators about the transition into kindergarten or to learn how current transitions resources are being used or not used.

The long-term plan should identify the policy changes needed to help strengthen what is happening in local communities. These policy changes may require legislative or regulatory action but might also be accomplished through guidance and collaboration with other state agencies or bodies. Local leaders, school districts, and community leaders can use what they learn from the transitions policies and practices in place at their schools, community ECE programs, and other community organizations to inform the policies needed to strengthen and build upon what is already happening.

State and local improvement plans should include three categories for policy action: (1) alignment, coordination, and collaboration; (2) transitions planning and direct support; and (3) guidance, evaluation, and resources. (See section 9 for an explanation of these categories.) These categories should be used as a guide to creating transitions that don’t just occur at a single point—the start of the school year—but foster ongoing relationship building, collaboration and coordination, and feedback loops to inform future iterations. These transitions policies support a comprehensive P–3 system that values access, child, family, and educator experiences, and outcomes.

Transitions plans should be reviewed by and strengthened with ideas and experiences from diverse parties, including parents, educators, and others across the early childhood, K–12, health, and family well-being communities.

A core component of transitions team success is establishing shared baselines for ideas and initiatives generated through the planning process. In fact, an early step in kickoff meetings of state and local transitions teams is creating a tool or framework for analyzing proposals for policy change. Teams should work together to select the handful of cost and expected benefit metrics that any proposal must pass to move forward. Because costs and benefits can be diffused among a range of stakeholders, it also can be a tool for bringing diverse interest groups together under a shared set of goals.

Implementation of individual policies should be agreed upon by relevant team members and interested parties. They can also be connected to the broader systems in place for supporting young children and their families. This requires planning that accounts for, addresses, and optimizes the existing capacity and responsibilities of school districts and community partners. Planning should also consider funding streams already in place that could be repurposed or expanded to support transitions. Just as transitions teams develop a common framework for choosing which policies to evaluate, they should also map out how selected activities serve children. See section 8 of this toolkit for policy ideas and sections 9 and 10 for a comprehensive list of potential funding streams.

The timeline for implementing transitions activities will vary depending on the needs and priorities identified at the local level as well as the current availability of funds, future opportunities for additional funds, and the current capacity of staff. It should be nimble enough to respond quickly to new funding opportunities, information revealed from data and evaluation, and other local challenges. At the state level, timelines should be more rigid, so that local transitions teams are aware of deadlines for reporting information to state agencies, applying for grant funds, and so on.

To ensure that work plans of transitions teams at all levels are clear and actionable, anticipated time frames for development, implementation, and evaluation should be embedded throughout. Timelines should be developed with clear leaders of work streams, ensuring that team members are aware of and know who is responsible for the many moving components of implementation. It is also important to approach both the planning and implementation of transitions activities as a consistent, ongoing, and cyclical process. During any month of the year, teams can be working to revise or update plans, publish and review data, or implement activities.

Regular assessment and evaluation of state and local transitions policies is a critical step for ensuring that initiatives remain timely and effective. Work plans should be developed with evaluation and data collection in mind.

Preparing for policy to be evaluated should at least include a review of existing data reporting and collection systems as a component of the self-assessment completed in step 1, but it should also consider plans for studying and updating policies based on findings.

As initiatives are implemented and policies are changed, transitions teams can partner with state and local accountability and research staff at early childhood and K–12 agencies for technical assistance with evaluation. Consistent with the tenets of implementation science, evaluating an initiative involves constant evaluation and mechanisms for continuous quality improvement that allow for nimble adjustments to increase effectiveness more quickly. Researchers can leverage data from existing systems of evaluation to understand how cohorts of children participating in transitions activities performed compared to their peers. They can also administer pre- and post-surveys or other methods of evaluation to parents, children, and teachers to understand how transitions planning influences family engagement, teacher satisfaction, and other goals outside the realm of traditional accountability systems. Data should be disaggregated by race, gender, primary language, and socioeconomic and disability status to ensure disparities in access or outcomes are identified.

The transitions team should also include a way to ensure that research or trends in one community inform efforts in other communities. State education agencies play a critical role in convening school districts and localities, especially through gathering and clearly displaying data in statewide longitudinal data systems. Such information-sharing post-implementation help ensure that new activities and policies for future kindergarten cohorts can be adjusted.