Ready for Kindergarten

According to data from the Lastinger Center for Learning at the University of Florida, some 40% of children in the United States enter Kindergarten unprepared and 3/4 of those students will never catch up with their Kindergarten-ready peers. A report from Bridgespan notes that number grows to 50% starting behind for children growing up in low-income communities. The Cooperative is shifting that reality for students growing up in underserved KCMO neighborhoods. End-of-year data from Cooperative classrooms indicate that the majority of Cooperative pre-K students are mastering the competencies they will need to succeed in Kindergarten.

The Cooperative uses common student assessments that measure cognitive, social, and emotional growth across its classrooms to gather data to inform instruction and program design. The Desired Results Developmental Profile (DRDP) is the Cooperative’s formative assessment and the Pre-K Oberservation Form (PKOF) and its sister Kindergarten Observation Form (KOF) are used as our summative assessment tools. The pandemic made data collection challenging in the last few school years, but this year’s data collection is complete and paints an encouraging picture of student growth.

PKOF

Across all domains on the PKOF, 67% of all Cooperative achieved Kindergarten readiness by the end of the school year, up from 20% at the start of the school year.

DRDP

Similarly, the DRDP results reveal significant growth over the course of the school year. Kindergarten readiness grew by as much as 30 percentage points in some domains over the course of the Pre-K year. We are grateful for the hard work and commitment of students, families, teachers, program leaders, and other Cooperative partners that made these gains possible.

Student data provides both encouragement that the Cooperative is making progress towards its mission and usable knowledge that enables partners to learn from one another and continue setting a new bar for quality in pre-K education.