As PEER approaches the close of its third year, the research team continues to progress towards completing the initial research projects proposed in PEER’s grant application to the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). In 2014, PEER outlined three initial research aims:
- To understand children’s school readiness as measured by the Connecticut Kindergarten Entrance Inventory (KEI);
- To understand the use of assessment tools in early childhood education settings; and,
- To explore teacher- and school-level factors predict kindergarten performance.
To approach aim 1, PEER partnered with the Connecticut State Department of Education (CSDE), ultimately finalizing a data sharing agreement this past fall. The agreement allows PEER to study child-level KEI results that were collected across the state between fall 2010 and fall 2013. Over the fall and winter, PEER has been analyzing this data to examine (a) the overall performance of children on the KEI, (b) group differences in performance by gender, socioeconomic status (SES), English learner status, and race/ethnicity, and (c) any differences in performance by district size. As spring gets underway, PEER is drafting a practice and policy brief that presents the study’s findings in a meaningful, accessible way. The management team looks forward to sharing this brief with early childhood education (ECE) stakeholders in Connecticut later this year. PEER hopes that this study will provide new information about performance gaps among children as they enter kindergarten. PEER also hopes that the study’s findings will serve as a useful comparison to data from the new Kindergarten Entry Assessment that the CSDE plans to launch in the future.
PEER pursued aim 2 by surveying early childhood teachers about how they use assessments in their classrooms. The survey focused on classrooms serving children from birth to 5-years-old. This effort focused on PEER’s member communities: Bridgeport, Norwalk, and Stamford. Specifically, PEER surveyed lead teachers employed by the three school districts and by the largest community-based ECE provider in each city. PEER sought to examine (a) how assessment tools are used in ECE classrooms and (b) whether there are community and setting differences in how assessment tools are used. Teacher confidentiality was protected throughout the study. Survey results indicate that across all three communities and both types of settings (district-based and community-based), teachers use a wide variety of assessments for a broad range of purposes. To increase the value of this study, PEER is diving deeper into the data to examine the use of different assessments relative to the purpose for which they were designed. PEER will draft a second practice and policy brief addressing classroom assessment that should be helpful to a wide range of ECE organizations as they consider their own assessment practices.
Finally, PEER is pursuing aim 3 by examining the association of (a) teacher- and (b) school-level variables with student performance during the kindergarten year. Because communities across the state have made changes in which assessments they use to measure progress during kindergarten, making comparisons across years has proved difficult. In addition, many districts use paper-based assessments, which means that assessment results aren’t readily available. For these reasons, PEER decided to focus on a partner community (Norwalk) that began to implement a computer-based assessment districtwide in grades K-3 in 2014. PEER recently finalized a data sharing agreement with Norwalk and looks forward to beginning analysis of this data. The practice and policy brief that results from this study should be helpful to districts as they consider practices and policies related to hiring, placement, class size, and other factors that may be related to kindergarten performance.
As PEER wraps up these initial research projects, the partnership is turning its attention to the priority areas defined in the long-term research agenda that was developed collaboratively by PEER stakeholders. This winter, PEER launched the dual language learners (DLL) projects that have been funded by the Spencer Foundation. As part of this process, PEER is convening meetings with its core and participating member organizations to seek input on the DLL projects. In May, PEER stakeholders will re-examine the three remaining priority areas of the long-term research agenda, reaffirm their relevance, and explore specific projects that would address these priority areas. PEER remains committed to producing rigorous, collaborative, actionable research focused on children from birth through age 8, and the contributions of local ECE stakeholders are essential to this work!