INDICATORS OF EQUITY RELATED TO
PRE-K EDUCATION
Early childhood experiences set the stage for later academic success. “Kindergarten readiness” refers to the broad set of foundational skills, behaviors, and knowledge that enable children to successfully transition into kindergarten and achieve academic success throughout the primary grades. Monitoring these skills is important because large differences between different groups of students become apparent well before children enter kindergarten, and they can have lasting effects. These differences are largely associated with family socioeconomic status, parental levels of education, and the extent to which English is spoken in the home. Identifying and addressing disparities at the earliest time possible in children’s lives can help education systems prepare all students for future success.
Participation in early childhood education is a strong predictor of kindergarten readiness, and one of the most important out-of-home experiences that young children have. Early learning programs are important for helping children develop the behaviors and competencies they will need to do well in kindergarten. Participating for at least 2 years before entering kindergarten may be expected to benefit all children. Yet access and enrollment are markedly less for children from lower-income families, children whose parents have less education, and children whose parents are not proficient in English.
For more detail and supporting research:
See pages 52-57 and 86-89 of Monitoring Educational Equity
Indicator:
Disparities in Access to and Participation in High-Quality Pre-K Programs
While participation in almost any preschool program can be beneficial, participation in high-quality programs is even more important. Dimensions of quality include classroom resources, curriculum, interaction quality between teacher and children, and teachers’ credentials and experience. These dimensions can be difficult to measure, so program licensure is often used as a proxy for quality because it can be tracked relatively easily and is relatively comparable within states. State quality rating and improvement systems may be used as direct measures of quality, though they would not be comparable with each other. To increase comparability, these systems could be aligned with surveys from the National Institute of Early Education Research at Rutgers University, which are available to license.
Access to high-quality early childhood programs is only half of the equation, however: families also must enroll their children to reap the long-term benefits. Children from less advantaged backgrounds, who could benefit most from programs, are often the least likely to be enrolled.
| What to Measure | What Data to Use | Examples of Data Collection Instruments | Some Considerations and Challenges |
|---|---|---|---|
| Availability of licensed pre-K programs* to children from different groups (proxy for quality) | State licensing agencies for early childhood programs by zip code | No data collection instruments needed: indicator can be based on calculations of existing data | Ensuring that data can be disaggregated by characteristics that are important to equity |
| Group differences in participation in licensed pre-K programs* (proxy for quality) | Disaggregated enrollment data from licensed centers | ||
* Licensed pre-K programs include those offered by school districts, Head Start programs, and other state-licensed programs. |
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Indicator:
Disparities in Academic Readiness
Achievement in the preschool and early childhood years refers mainly to a set of reading- and math-related skills, such as recognizing all letters, counting to 20, writing one’s own name, and reading words in a book. Research has shown that between-group differences in academic readiness are strongly related to family levels of education and home language.
At the national level, there is ongoing work to develop a common kindergarten readiness indicator that can be disaggregated by such characteristics as race/ethnicity, income, and parental education; this effort is being led by Child Trends (see https://www.childtrends.org). Until that work is completed, states and school districts can assess academic readiness by using publicly or commercially available assessments or developing their own.
| What to Measure | What Data to Use | Examples of Data Collection Instruments | Some Considerations and Challenges |
|---|---|---|---|
Group differences in reading and literacy skills
|
Assessments of early literacy and numeracy skills | Publicly available questionnaires from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study: Kindergarten (ECLS-K) (National Center for Education Statistics) State-developed or -adopted assessments* |
Identifying an assessment tool that can be used to compare readiness within and across states |
Group differences in numeracy and math skills
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*For specific examples, see http://ceelo.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ceelo_fast_fact_kea_state_scan_2017_01_for_web.pdf. |
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Indicator:
Disparities in Self-Regulation and Attention Skills
Nearly all experts agree that being able to sit in a classroom and pay attention are essential behaviors for school learning. These skills are part of a larger set of skills called cognitive self-regulation, which generally refers to a person’s ability to evaluate the steps and actions required to meet a desired goal and to control their behavior to reach that goal. Cognitive self-regulation is a broad concept with multiple, overlapping components, and there is no single, agreed-upon definition. Group differences in cognitive and self-regulation skills are associated with family socioeconomic levels.
| What to Measure | What Data to Use | Examples of Data Collection Instruments | Some Considerations and Challenges |
|---|---|---|---|
Group differences in self-regulation and attention skills. Ability to:
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Kindergarten readiness assessments that include behavioral and social components | Parent and teacher instruments from ECLS-K-2011 (National Center for Education Statistics) Locally adopted assessments (e.g. Kindergarten Readiness Assessment, used by Maryland and Ohio, Desired Results Developmental Profile, used by California and Illinois) State developed assessments* |
Ensuring that assessments accurately measure the desired aspects of readiness Defining levels of readiness based on assessment scores |
*For specific examples, see http://ceelo.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ceelo_fast_fact_kea_state_scan_2017_01_for_web.pdf. |
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FOR FURTHER READING:
G.J. Duncan and K. Magnuson. (2011). The nature and impact of early achievement skills, attention and behavior problems. In G.J. Duncan and R.J. Murnane (Eds.), Whither Opportunity: Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances (pp. 47-69). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
M. Burchinal, K. Magnuson, D. Powell, and S.S. Hong. (2015). Early childcare and education. In M.H. Bornstein, T. Leventhal, and R.M. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental Science: Ecological Settings and Processes (pp. 223-267). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
