KINDERGARTEN READINESS (FALL 2022)

Kindergarten Assessments

FWISD administers the Texas Kindergarten Entry Assessment (TX-KEA)27 and the MAP® Reading Fluency™28 and Growth™29 assessments to kindergarten students at the beginning of each year. As with the prekindergarten assessments, these assessments are screening tools that help teachers plan instruction that targets individual student needs.

The MAP® Reading Fluency™ and Growth™ assessments each measure slightly different aspects of children’s reading ability. MAP® Reading Fluency™ assesses the extent to which students have mastered specific grade level reading skills. MAP® Reading Growth™ assesses children’s ability to use their reading skills for learning.

In prior years, the kindergarten comparison group included students who may have attended FWISD prekindergarten. For the current evaluation, FWISD staff identified the students who attended FWISD prekindergarten in the prior year, and these students were excluded from the comparison group. With this new process:

• the CFSRP group included kindergarten students who attended a CFSRP center as prekindergarteners in 2021-2022 or as 3-year-olds30, in 2020-2021, and

• the comparison group included students who did not attend FWISD prekindergarten in the prior year or a CFSRP center at any time.

Descriptive analyses revealed that CFSRP children had higher ratings on all literacy measures relative to students who had never attended a CFSRP center or FWISD prekindergarten (see Figure 13). These findings are similar to those of prior years, including lower percentages of CFSRP students on track with blending skills (see Appendix G).

Descriptive analyses revealed no differences between the groups for executive function. However, the comparison group received higher ratings for social emotional skills (see Figure 14). Appendix G shows group comparisons from prior years.

27 TX-KEA is a screening tool designed to assess whether kindergarten students are on-track with their literacy and social emotional skills. TX-KEA meets the Texas Educations Agency requirement for school districts to administer a Kindergarten assessment for all Kindergarten students. https://www.texaskea.org/.

28 MAP® Reading Fluency™ is an online screening and progress monitoring tool that assesses basic reading skills with an emphasis on oral fluency (e.g., listening comprehension, words per minute, accuracy, decoding). Students receive a rating of below, approaching, meeting, or exceeding grade level expectations. https://www.nwea.org/map-reading-fluency/

29 The Kindergarten MAP® Reading Growth™ is a standardized, norm referenced assessment that also focuses on early literacy including reading comprehension and use of vocabulary. Students are rated as low, low average, average, high average, or high, based on the performance of a national sample. https://www. nwea.org/map-growth/

30 Some CFSRP students entered prekindergarten in FWISD once they turned 4 years old while others remained at a CFSRP center for their prekindergarten year.

OVERALL Vocabulary Listen. Comp. OVERALL Letter Names Letter Sounds Blending

Executive Function Social Emotional

31 Although TX-KEA includes additional literacy measures as well as math measures, the evaluation focuses on overall language and literacy scores and on 5 specific skills identified by CFSRP staff as most important for kindergarten readiness.

MAP® Reading Fluency™ and Growth™ Results (Fall 2022)

Figures 15 and 16 show the percentages of children in each group rated below, approaching, meets, or exceeds grade level expectations for MAP® Fluency™ Language and Decoding measures. CFSRP students had higher percentages of students that met or exceeded grade level expectations than the comparison group for three of the four measures (Listening Comprehension, Picture Vocabulary and Phonics - highlighted in green). The ratings were similar for both groups on the phonological awareness measures. These results are similar to those from the Fall 2020 and 2021 analyses, when CFSRP students had higher ratings on all measures (see Appendix H).

MAP® Reading Growth™Results

MAP® Reading Growth™ rates students as low, low-average, average, highaverage or high compared to a national sample. Figures 17, 18 and 19 show the results for Overall Reading Achievement and for the measures of Foundational Skills and Comprehension Skills. Appendix I shows the results for the Fall 2021 and Fall 2020 kindergarten MAP Reading Growth™ assessments.

Overall, the CFSRP group had higher percentages of students rated at or above average than the comparison group of students who never attended a CFSRP program or FWISD prekindergarten. The CFSRP group also had higher percentages of children at the highest level (20% vs. 6%, Figure 17).

On both MAP Reading Growth measures of Foundational Skills and on both measures of Comprehension, the CFSRP group had higher percentages of students at or above average than the comparison group of students who never attended a CFSRP program or FWISD prekindergarten (Figures 18 and 19).