APPENDIX D: DATA ANALYSIS AND ASSESSMENT TOOLS FOR FWISD DATA

Camp Fire partners with FWISD to gain access to data from student assessments currently used in the school district. Through this partnership, the CFSRP evaluation team has been able to assess the impact of the program for eight years with analyses of the children’s assessment scores not only as they enter school but also through their kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade years. Camp Fire contracted with Aware Research Solutions Inc. to provide evaluation and data analysis services.

Each year, using a random selection process50, the evaluation team compares the assessment scores of children who attended a CFSRP-supported center in one of the prior six years and children in demographically similar comparison groups who did not attend one of the centers. This technique allows the evaluation team to create a random, non-biased sample of children who are similar to the sample of CFSRP children and, in turn, make valid comparisons between the two groups. Any statistically significant differences identified in the results provide evidence that the differences between CFSRP children’s scores and the comparison group’s scores can be attributed, in part, to the CFSRP program rather than to random chance.

The groups were matched on the following characteristics:

• School location

• Grade level

• Ethnicity

• Free/Reduced Lunch Status

• Gender

• Limited English Proficiency (LEP) status

• Special Education status

To get the best possible match, the comparison groups are necessarily larger than the CFSRP groups. Students with Special Education and/ or LEP designations included in the analyses only if the CFSRP group included 5 or more with the designation (see Appendix E for the demographic descriptions of the CFSRP and comparison groups). Depending on the grade level for each set of comparison groups, the analyses were conducted with the FWISD assessment data described in the table on the next page, “FWISD Assessments Used in the Evaluation.” Because very few CFSRP children were assessed in Spanish only the English versions of each assessment were included in the analyses. ASSESSMENT

Prekindergarten Readiness51

CIRCLE PROGRESS MONITORING TOOL (CIRCLE)52

CIRCLE is similar to the CPALLS+ assessment used in the CFSRP three and four-year old classrooms. It is a criterion-referenced assessment based on the Texas Education Agency (TEA) prekindergarten guidelines for literacy, math, and social skills. Teachers use CIRCLE at the beginning of the school year to help identify children who meet or do not meet developmental benchmarks so they can plan individualized instruction.

50 For the current evaluation, the random selection process used SAS Statistical Analysis Software, SAS/STAT | SAS to select the comparison group students. 51 This description is taken from the Texas Kindergarten Entry Assessment User Guide at: https://cliengage.org/user-guides/User_Guide_TX-KEA_8.13.2018.pdf 52 CLI Engage (2017). CIRCLE Progress Monitoring System. https://cliengage.org/public/tools/assessment/circle-progress-monitoring/

TEXAS KINDERGARTEN ENTRY ASSESSMENT (TX-KEA)54

TX-KEA is a screening tool designed to assess kindergarten children’s skills in seven areas of school readiness: Language, Early Literacy, Math, Science, Executive Functioning, Social Emotional Skills, and Physical Skills. For each measure, students receive a score indicating if they are on-track, need monitoring or need additional support/ intervention. Teachers use the TX-KEA is to identify children who may need additional support and to plan individualized instruction.

Texas school districts and charter schools are required to administer a Kindergarten assessment for all Kindergarten students. The TX-KEA is on the Commissioner’s approved list of assessment Instruments for meeting this requirement.

The TX-KEA includes four domains: language, literacy, executive functioning, and social emotional competence and emotion management.

APPENDIX D, CONTINUED: DATA ANALYSIS AND ASSESSMENT TOOLS FOR FWISD DATA