BACKGROUND
Over time, two primary measurements of pre-K program quality have emerged: adherence to program standards (such as the National Institute of Early Education Research (NIEER) benchmarks) and success on child outcome measures (such as passing scores on literacy, numeracy, or socioemotional development assessments).
Rigorous program standards have long been a focus for improving program quality, but they ultimately need to be paired with direct child outcome measures to determine if the standards are having the intended effect—helping children learn and grow. As we have written previously, measuring program quality via program standards, let alone child outcome measures, across provider types in Mississippi has proven to be very difficult. While Mississippi licensed childcare providers, for example, must meet a long list of health and safety regulations, they face no minimum requirements measuring program quality across any of the recognized domains of early childhood learning. The Mississippi Department of Human Services (MDHS) previously sponsored a monthly survey of childcare centers that collected data on some relevant program characteristics; but unless centers participated in the briefly lived Quality Stars program, a voluntary quality rating system for childcare centers, extensive information relevant to the NIEER benchmarks has never been available. Following the demise of both Quality Stars and the monthly survey, MDHS no longer collects any type of program quality information for every single center in the state on a regular basis. Instead, MDHS partially transitioned to a voluntary system of self-reporting on program characteristics, an initiative that itself will be phased out.iii Currently, only licensed childcare providers with national accreditation or who participate in the collaborative program adhere to well-defined program quality measures.
STATE OF PRE-K SERIES Public2021School and Collaborative Pre-K Programs and Kindergarten Readiness in 2017-2018
A primary purpose of pre-K is to prepare children for kindergarten in the short term and increase their chances of success in school and life in the long term. Policymakers that want pre-K programs to succeed in fulfilling this purpose have to build systems to measure pre-K program quality.
Program standards, which measure characteristics such as teacher qualifications, curriculum, or class size, are best understood as a means to an end, representing the educational conditions necessary for children to succeed. For example, researchers created (and updated in 2017) the NIEER benchmarks to capture the elements of programs that led to positive child outcomes in high-quality research studies.i The NIEER benchmarks focus on program requirements, but other researchers have also developed standardized measures of individual classroom conditions, which may measure, for example, the strength of adult-child interactions in a specific classroom, a program characteristic for which there is a strong research base.ii
Mississippi First I Page 1
Research Brief by Rachel Canter and Andrew Van Horn
: BRIEF MAY
The picture is clearer for Mississippi Head Start and public school pre-K programs, which must each use multiple measures of program quality, though these measures are not identical. Head Start requires all grantees to meet 9 of the 10 NIEER benchmarks1 and requires that each classroom is annually rated using the CLASS assessment, which measures adult-child interactions among other classroom environment factors. Head Starts must also use one of several approved child outcome assessments, but this data is not reported publicly. Mississippi public school pre-K programs2 must meet all of the NIEER benchmarks, with the benchmarks related to teacher qualifications phased in over time. All Mississippi public school pre-K programs must also administer the Brigance Early Childhood Screen III (3-5) as well as a fall and spring administration of the MKAS2, the state’s kindergarten-entry exam, which has a four-year-old pre-K version. Furthermore, all Mississippi public school pre-K classrooms receive CLASS Finally,evaluations.Mississippi providers participating in the state-funded collaborative pre-K program, which includes Head Start, childcare centers, and public schools, have the most rigorous quality framework, requiring adherence to the 10 NIEER benchmarks (no phase-in allowance), administration of the Brigance and MKAS2, and an annual CLASS evaluation.
1 For the remaining benchmark—that lead teachers must hold a bachelor’s degree—Head Start requires that teachers hold at least an associate’s degree in an early childhood-related 2field.Here, we are referring to non-collaborative public school programs. Public school programs that are part of collaboratives must meet all 10 of the NIEER benchmarks at inception.
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Since all public school kindergarteners take the MKAS2 again the fall of their kindergarten entry, the state has three consistent data points for students who attended public school pre-K. However, the kindergartenentry information that is publicly available is not perfectly matched to the publicly available pre-K data, as the public kindergarten-entry data likely includes children who did not attend that district’s program.
3 The DuBard School for Language Disorders, a private, state-accredited school, was mistakenly included in the 2018 report as having taken the assessment. This was a misprint according to conversations Rachel Canter held with MDE.
4 One additional program—Wayne County School District—reported spring scores but no fall scores, so growth could not be calculated. They were excluded from all calculations of non-collaborative growth, both program-level and the overall, for this reason. However, they are in the overall average for non-collaborative spring score. School districts that had no pre-K program are, of course, also not counted in the 27 or otherwise.
DATA & LIMITATIONS
and introducing bias.4 The average spring test score in the public sample was 531.3, but the average spring test score of all non-collaborative programs—including those with suppressed data—was 550. Furthermore, the average growth for the full sample of non-collaborative programs was 130, but it was only 114 for the public sample. Clearly, the suppressed scores raise both averages, and omitting them from our sample has resulted in averages that are lower than reality. We chose to use the average for the public sample when providing tables of each non-collaborative program’s performance, as this was the information available. However, five non-collaborative programs with scores between 498 and 537 reported as “above average” in growth using the 114-point benchmark would be reported as “below average” when using the 130-point benchmark. Four programs scoring above 538 grew more than the 114-point benchmark but would be below the 130-point growth benchmark. Please see Appendix B for a full listing of these differences. Although we use the sample of publicly available program scores for the non-collaborative program-level analysis, when comparing collaborative versus non-collaborative performance, we use the averages reported by MDE that include the suppressed non-collaborative data. We made this choice because we did not do a program-level analysis when comparing collaboratives and non-collaboratives, instead examining each group as a whole. The more precise, overall averages provided by MDE, therefore, represented a truer look at this picture.
Another problem is that although the Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) reports MKAS2 pre-K data annually at the program level (school district3 or collaborative), we do not have access to student-level data, which would have allowed us to do a more careful analysis by controlling for student characteristics using a multi-variate regression. In their public report,iv MDE also suppresses scores for a program or site when there are fewer than 10 test-takers in order to protect privacy. For this reason, only programs with 10 or more test-takers are represented in the public sample used for our non-collaborative program-level analysis (all collaboratives had 10 or more test-takes). See Appendix A for the list of omitted programs; in total, 27 non-collaborative programs’ data is not reported in the public data set, systematically removing smaller programs
Of the various program measures across provider types described above, the only child outcome measure for which data is publicly available is the MKAS2. The MKAS2 has been administered in the state since 20142015. Children in public school and collaborative pre-K programs take this assessment in the fall and spring (pre-K program entry and exit).
We found only two statistically significant relationships—the relationships between growth and spring score and fall and spring score. We also tested the relationship between spring score and total district revenue, district Identified Student Percentage (a measure of poverty), instructional spending per pupil, total instructional costs, whether programs were full day, whether 50% of teachers have a pre-K-specific license endorsement, the total number of pre-K teachers, the student-teacher ratio, and the total number of students as well as the relationship between fall score and growth. Both average growth and average fall score had a strong, positive relationship with average spring score but fall score was not correlated with higher or lower growth. In other words, as either fall score or growth increased, so did spring score, but higher fall scorers were not more likely to also grow more. See the full report for an explanation of this finding.Collaborative programs have higher growth, higher spring scores, and more consistency in scores and growth among programs than non-collaborative programs.
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We attempted to identify which non-collaborative programs may be exclusively serving children with special education status by matching our database of programs to the MDE report. Based on this work, we concluded that non-collaborative programs with publicly available data that exclusively offer special education pre-K had lower fall test scores, spring scores, and growth. When removing these special educationonly programs from the public sample, the average fall score for other non-collaborative programs rises very slightly from 417 to 420. However, removing special education-only programs results in larger increases in growth (from 114 to 124) and spring score (from 531 to 544). Since we use the overall non-collaborative averages (420 for fall score,5 130 for growth, 531 for spring score) to compare non-collaborative and collaborative programs but could not control for special education-only programs within the overall non-collaborative averages, the non-collaborative programs’ overall averages may be lower than they would be if we were able to hold special education status constant.
Our analysis of public school and collaborative pre-K data yielded several key findings. For a further explanation of these findings, please read the full research brief.
One final caveat when comparing collaborative and non-collaborative performance: non-collaborative programs include every type of pre-K program, other than a collaborative program, offered within a public school. These include blended Head Start as well as every other type of funded pre-K program (Title I-funded, tuition-based, district-supported, or philanthropically funded). Most importantly, perhaps, noncollaborative programs include programs that exclusively serve children receiving special education services through the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, whereas collaborative programs are always open to all children regardless of their special education status. That means that some non-collaborative programs’ individual scores and growth are not comparable to other programs’ or collaboratives’ scores and growth because they are serving materially different student populations. Therefore, please interpret individual program scores with caution.
KEY FINDINGS
Collaboratives’ differential performance is not explained by county contextual factors such as race, percentage of children in poverty, per capita income, or percentage of children in single-family households. Collaboratives’ counties are economically and demographically similar to non-collaboratives’ counties.3.2.1.
5 This is the same fall score average as the public sample-only fall average when removing special education-only programs. The implication is that the overall fall score average for non-collaborative programs may be even higher than 420 if special education-only programs were accounted for.
ANALYSIS
6 Eight school districts—Canton, Clarksdale, East Tallahatchie, Greenwood, Grenada, Lamar, Petal, and Picayune—operated both non-collaborative and collaborative programs. The scores for these programs are reportedly separately by MDE, and we have done the same. Primarily, the non-collaborative programs in these districts exclusively served children identified for special education services as required by federal law.
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WHAT DO MISSISSIPPI KINDERGARTEN READINESS SCORES TELL US ABOUT PRE-K PROGRAM QUALITY IN NON-COLLABORATIVE PUBLIC SCHOOL PROGRAMS IN 2017-2018?
MDE sets its readiness expectation as a spring pre-K score of 498 with a fall kindergarten-entry score of 538. Children reaching these scores are “on-track” for kindergarten at the end of the pre-K year (498) or “ready” for kindergarten in the fall (538) and, importantly, “on-track” for proficiency in reading by third grade, according to a study performed by the company that developed the MKAS2.v To gauge relative program quality, we divide collaborative and non-collaborative programs into categories based two factors—their average spring score and their average growth, which is the difference in their fall and spring average scores. While both measures In this first analysis, we share and compare the performance of public school pre-K programs not part of collaboratives6 to the average for these types of programs. For non-collaborative programs, the average growth was 130 points from fall to spring, according to MDE’s “2017-2018 Pre-Kindergarten Assessment Results for Early Learning Collaboratives and Other Four-Year-Old Classrooms” report. However, as we explain above, the following tables use 114 points as the average growth benchmark since this was the average growth of programs with publicly available program-level data. Therefore, our analysis shows programs with spring scores at or above 538 and with growth greater than or equal to 114 as being the most successful in meeting readiness expectations compared to other non-collaborative programs, closely followed by programs with spring scores at or above 498 with growth greater than or equal to 114. Programs with spring scores below 498 and growth below 114 points are the least successful compared to other noncollaborative programs as well as the state score benchmark. (Again, see Appendix B for how this shifts when using 130 points for the average growth Tablebenchmark.)1shows two important trends regarding test scores. First, districts with higher growth tended to have higher spring test scores, and this result is statistically significant (for each 1-point increase in growth, there is a 1.01 increase in spring score, with an adjusted R2 of .8385). Second, districts with higher fall scores are more likely to have higher spring scores (for each 1-point increase in fall score, there is a 1.06 increase in spring score), but the explanatory power of this correlation is extremely weak (adjusted R2 of .167), indicating that other variables likely make more of a difference. Furthermore, districts with higher fall scores are not more likely to have stronger growth. These statistics show that the combination of a higher starting point and higher growth is the surest path to kindergarten-ready students, but students without a high fall score who have strong growth can also achieve a high final spring score. Since there is no relationship between fall score and growth, students with a lower fall score are not less likely to grow.
Counts of districts bear this trend out. Districts tend to have scores above 538 and above-average growth or lag in both. There are very few districts that grew a great deal and have average scores below 538, and only a few districts that prepared students for kindergarten (scored at or above 538) but did not grow the average amount. In general, this finding shows public school pre-K programs that are successful in growing students will also be successful in readying them for kindergarten, regardless of where students started.
In other words, what matters for growth is what happens during the school year, not the level at which children entered. For these students, their path to kindergarten entry can and does happen through maximizing growth. Another way to look at this phenomenon is to note that those with low spring scores also showed minimal growth.
are important, they provide slightly different information. Average spring score shows whether pre-K students, on average, meet the “on-track” or “ready” benchmark at the point in time at which they took the spring assessment. Average growth shows how much value a program added to a student’s learning over the full pre-K year, regardless of the level at which a student entered pre-K in the fall. In this research brief, we analyze noncollaborative and collaborative performance separately and then compare the two, with the caveats we describe above.
STATE OF PRE-K SERIES: Public School and Collaborative Pre-K Programs and Kindergarten Readiness in 2017-2018 MISSISSIPPI FIRST I PAGE 5 SCHOOL DISTRICT SPRINGSCORE GROWTH Western Line School District 666 235 Biloxi Public School District 651 202 South Panola School District 633 225 Neshoba County School District 626 235 Oxford School District 607 157 West Point Consolidated School District 604 178 Hollandale School District 599 174 George County School District 596 147 Water Valley School District 594 208 Chickasaw County School District 594 192 South Pike School District 584 156 Carroll County School District 580 180 Vicksburg Warren School District 580 154 Holmes County School District 579 164 Brookhaven School District 578 142 Choctaw County School District 577 172 Aberdeen School District 576 161 Pearl Public School District 576 147 South Tippah School District 574 138 Lafayette County School District 573 125 Cleveland School District 573 124 Scores498Below Scores Between 498 and 537 Scores at or Above 538 114-Point Benchmark Score Growth Programs Score Growth Programs Score Growth Programs Below-Average Growth (Below 114 Points) 451 49 21 520 85 12 552 106 5 Above-Average Growth (At or Above 114 Points) No programs met these criteria 528 125 7 580 160 36 TABLE 1: Average Spring Score, Average Growth, and Number of Programs by Score and Average Growth TABLE 2: Programs with Average Spring Scores at or Above 538 and Above-Average Growth A list of programs in each category is below. Programs are sorted first by average score, then by average growth. A list of programs omitted due to suppressed data is available in Appendix A. SCHOOL DISTRICT SPRINGSCORE GROWTH Pascagoula Separate School District 570 178 Attala County School District 569 163 Laurel School District 566 146 Leland School District 566 133 Kosciusko School District 565 175 Tupelo Public School District 564 140 Wilkinson County School District 561 139 Coffeeville School District 560 159 South Delta School District 559 131 Meridian Public School District 557 144 Kemper County School District 554 133 Tunica County School District 553 151 Franklin County School District 546 114 Philadelphia Public School District 541 134 Jefferson County School District 538 115
STATE OF PRE-K SERIES: Public School and Collaborative Pre-K Programs and Kindergarten Readiness in 2017-2018 MISSISSIPPI FIRST I PAGE 6 TABLE 3: Programs with Average Spring Scores at or Above 538 and BelowAverage Growth TABLE 4: Programs with Average Spring Scores Between 498 and 538 and Above-Average Growth TABLE 5: Programs with Average Spring Scores Between 498 and 538 and BelowAverage Growth SCHOOL DISTRICT SPRINGSCORE GROWTH Coahoma County School District 559 110 Natchez-Adams School District 558 97 Lowndes County School District 557 112 Alcorn School District 546 107 Quitman County School District 541 102 SCHOOL DISTRICT SPRINGSCORE GROWTH Claiborne County School District 536 126 Columbus Municipal School District 536 121 Yazoo City Municipal School District 533 131 Calhoun County School District 529 133 Noxubee County School District 529 116 Rankin County School District 525 125 Moss Point School District 510 120 SCHOOL DISTRICT SPRINGSCORE GROWTH New Albany Public Schools 535 96 Union County School District 531 79 Winona Separate School District 531 77 Jackson Public School District 530 102 Forrest County Schools 528 82 Holly Springs School District 521 74 North Bolivar Consolidated School District 518 60 West Bolivar Consolidated School District 514 97 Lauderdale County School District 513 99 Madison County School District 513 88 Montgomery County School District 504 91 Prentiss County School District 498 77 TABLE 6: Programs with Average Spring Scores Below 498 and GrowthBelow-Average SCHOOL DISTRICT SPRINGSCORE GROWTH Itawamba County School District 497 89 Jackson County School District 493 31 Union Public School District 490 93 Lumberton Public School District 481 45 Lee County School District 468 25 Forest Municipal School District 466 68 Pontotoc City Schools 466 43 Hancock County School District 465 55 Desoto County School District 464 53 Poplarville Separate School District 462 51 Webster County School District 461 40 Covington County School District 459 56 Petal School District 441 77 Leake County School District 433 44 Picayune School District 430 63 Lamar County School District 426 32 Humphreys County School District 423 40 Ocean Springs School District 421 42 Jones County School District 412 45 Louisville Municipal School District 412 44 Scott County School District 407 -6
In addition to no collaboratives having an average score below the 498 benchmark, the majority of students from collaboratives are ready to start kindergarten, according to data from MDE. Finally, while a greater proportion of collaboratives that have students ready for kindergarten had belowaverage growth than non-collaborative districts did, they grew by a larger number of points on average. Like districts, collaboratives’ spring scores were influenced both by their fall scores and average growth, but the best-performing collaboratives did report the largest test score gains. Tables of collaboratives in each category are below. Collaboratives are sorted by average spring score. No collaboratives were omitted, as all had 10 or more
In this second analysis, we share and compare collaboratives’ performance relative to the average of other collaboratives. The average growth for collaboratives was 145 points. As in our non-collaborative analysis, the most successful collaboratives—compared to other collaboratives—are those with spring scores at or above 538 and above-average growth (at or above 145 points).7 No collaboratives had an average score below 498, the pre-K benchmark to be “on-track” for kindergarten, meaning that all collaboratives met state expectations. The table below shows the results of this first sorting of the data.
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test-takers. PROGRAM SPRING SCORE GROWTH Grenada Early Learning Collaborative 645 201 Coahoma County Pre-K Collaborative 614 180 Tallahatchie Early Learning Alliance 602 167 Monroe Early Learning Collaborative 591 161 Clarke County Early Learning Partnership 586 165 Corinth-Alcorn-Prentiss Early Learning Collaborative 584 162 Table 8: Collaboratives with Average Spring Scores at or Above 538 and Above-Average Growth 7 Using the 130-point non-collaborative growth benchmark, one additional collaborative—McComb—is “above-average” in growth; all but two collaboratives—Canton and Starkville Oktibbeha—are “above-average” using the 114-point non-collaborative growth benchmark.
WHAT DO MISSISSIPPI KINDERGARTEN READINESS SCORES TELL US ABOUT PRE-K PROGRAM QUALITY IN COLLABORATIVE PROGRAMS IN 2017-2018? SpringAverageScoreBelow498 Average Spring Score Between 498 and 537 Average Spring Score 538 or Greater 145-Point Benchmark No programs met these criteria Score Growth Collabs Score Growth Collabs Below-Average Growth (Below 145 Points) 526 107 4 563 127 4 Above-Average Growth (At or Above 145 Points) No programs met these criteria 604 173 6 TABLE 7: Average Spring Score, Average Growth, and Number of Collaboratives by Score and Average Growth
Overall, collaboratives produced higher spring scores and more growth than non-collaborative pre-K programs. The average spring score for collaboratives was 573, compared to the average of 550 for all other public school programs (531 for school districts with district-level data). Collaboratives’ average growth was 145 points, compared to the 130 points averaged by other public school programs (114 for programs with districtlevel data). As Table 11 shows, collaboratives had a tighter range of test scores (from 510 to 645) and growth (83 to 201) than non-collaboratives (407 to 666; -6 to 235 for growth), showing collaboratives had more consistent program quality as measured by child outcomes. Overall, collaboratives also had a greater proportion of students across programs reach the kindergarten-entry benchmark of 538 than non-collaboratives (75.6% to 67.08%).
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While collaboratives did have students with fall test scores that were slightly higher than students in other public school pre-K programs, their growth was much higher, leading to higher spring scores. At the same time, they also had more test takers, on average, per program, so it is less likely that their strong test scores are due to a small number of students skewing their performance. Collaboratives’ strong performance is consistent with MDE research controlling for student characteristics (see the next section) and shows that collaboratives are very effective in preparing students for kindergarten.
PROGRAM SPRINGSCORE GROWTH Picayune Early Learning Collaborative 578 127 Sunflower County Consolidated School District Collaborative 568 117 McComb Community Collaborative for Early Learning Success 557 137 Lamar County Early Learning Collaborative 550 125 TABLE 9: Collaboratives with Average Spring Scores at or Above 538 and Below-Average Growth PROGRAM SpringScore GROWTH Canton Early Learning Collaborative 534 108 Petal Early Learning Collaborative 532 115 Greenwood-Leflore Early Learning Collaborative 526 123 Starkville Oktibbeha Early Learning Collaborative 510 83 TABLE 10: Collaboratives with Average Spring Scores Between 498 and 537 and Below-Average Growth HOW DO COLLABORATIVES COMPARE WITH OTHER PUBLIC SCHOOL PRE-K PROGRAMS IN TERMS OF READINESS SCORES IN 2018-2019? FallAverageScore AverageSpringScore SpringScoreRange AverageGrowth GrowthRange At Aboveor538 Number Programsof NumberofTestTakers Non-Collaboratives 420 550 407-666 130 -6-235 67.08% 109 5,401 Collaboratives 428 573 510-645 145 83-201 75.6% 14 1,955 TABLE 11: Non-Collaboratives Compared to Collaboratives
HOW DO THESE FINDINGS COMPARE TO OTHER MISSISSIPPI PRE-K STUDIES EXAMINING CHILD OUTCOMES?
Although we could not control for student-level characteristics, we found that the demographic characteristics of the communities in which collaboratives are located do not explain the higher test scores. Counties with collaboratives8 have a slightly higher rate of child poverty and nearly identical per capita incomes. At the same time, they are located in counties with more families of color and fewer white students, on average. Finally, counties with collaboratives have higher rates of single-family households. However, a difference of means test shows that average demographic differences between counties with and without collaboratives are not statistically significant. While counties without collaboratives may have a slightly larger Black population, for example, this may be a measurement or sampling error. The counties are essentially equal in all descriptive statistics (see Table 12 below). Furthermore, collaboratives’ strong performance in our analysis is consistent with MDE research controlling for student characteristics (see the section below for more information). This shows that collaboratives are very effective in preparing students for kindergarten and are associated with more growth and higher spring scores, on average, than other public school pre-K programs. 40.25 32.41
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$20,618.13 46.21 Counties without Collaboratives 55.87 41.35 2.78 32.40 $20,070.76 46.15 TABLE 12: Descriptive Statistics of Counties with and without Collaboratives
8 We use counties rather than school districts as the unit of analysis here because collaboratives can be countywide and include multiple school districts. We acknowledge that this may introduce measurement error as the demographic analysis compares counties while the test score analysis compares collaboratives to non-collaborative programs within school districts, rather than counties. For this reason, we did not measure the relationship between county demographics and school districts’ performance using a regression.
Since our last pre-K report, MDE has also produced two research summaries on pre-K outcomes using student-level fall and spring pre-K MKAS2 data.vii With student-level data, the MDE studies were able to hold variables like race, ethnicity, gender, and family economic status constant to determine how students in different types of pre-K programs performed during their pre-K year. The first research summary, from March 2018, looked at the 2015-2016 school year, while the second research summary, from July 2018, examined results across the first three years of program implementation, from 20142017. Both of MDE’s reports show collaborative pre-K students performed the strongest on the MKAS2, followed by other public school pre-K students. This finding is consistent with what our analysis shows, further underscoring the value of pre-K to school readiness generally and the enhanced value of the collaborative program specifically. The second report also showed that collaboratives’ performance improved over time, indicating a “maturing of the program” may have contributed to its “increase in quality” even as the program expanded in that time period.
% White % Black % Other % Kids Povertyin PerIncomeCapita % inHouseholdsSingle-Family Counties with Collaboratives 56.11
9 This paper also examined the relationship between third grade reading proficiency and eighth grade reading proficiency, as well as the relationship between eighth grade reading proficiency and on-time high school graduation. Please also note that since the paper only used public school pre-K attendance, it did not control for children who attended pre-K in another setting, such as private childcare, Head Start, or private school.
3.65
For many years, Mississippi First has found it difficult to measure pre-K program quality using child outcome data due to issues with either data access or data existence. However, since we published our last report, two studies about Mississippi pre-K programs using child outcome data have been published. The first paper9 by the Social Science Research Center examined how children who attended any type of public school pre-K program in 2008 (pre-implementation of the Early Learning Collaborative Act) performed on the spring 2014 third grade state reading test compared to children who did not attend a public school pre-K program.vi After controlling for demographic characteristics, such as race and gender, as well as district-level poverty rates and attendance, the study found that children who had attended a public school pre-K program were 1.5 times more likely to be proficient in reading in the third grade. This finding underscores the value of pre-K on school achievement beyond school readiness.
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DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
Finally, while collaboratives are in communities that resemble the state economically and demographically, they are outperforming noncollaborative school districts. This finding is consistent with MDE internal research showing collaboratives outperform other public school students and students who did not attend pre-K, even when controlling for student characteristics. Once again, this provides strong evidence that the collaborative program is the path to expanding pre-K quality statewide.
The first key finding from this analysis is that fall test scores and growth were the only variables with a statistically significant relationship with spring score. For both collaboratives and districts, the highest spring scorers had the highest average growth, and the lowest scorers had the lowest growth. At the same time, fall scores and growth are not significantly correlated: it is not only the students who began with the highest (or lowest) test scores who grew the most. Kindergarten readiness is a function of both pre-K readiness and improvement during the pre-K year, but a child does not have to have high fall scores to end up with high spring scores. If a child does not enter pre-K with strong skills, a child can still become kindergarten ready through strong growth during the pre-K year. This finding is a very strong signal that quality pre-K—pre-K that helps children grow—matters enormously to kindergarten readiness. Unfortunately, without further program-level data, we could not determine what program factors, such as particular instructional practices, etc., are associated with stronger growth.
Second, collaboratives have extremely strong performance, on average, and this performance is consistent across programs. Three-quarters of collaborative students were above the 538 kindergarten readiness benchmark by the end of the pre-K year compared to only two-thirds of other public school pre-K students, and they also had higher growth, on average, than those other students.
Please note: The DuBard School for Language Disorders, a private, state-accredited school, was mistakenly included in tables in MDE’s report as having participated in the assessment. This was a misprint; the school did not participate in the assessment and therefore did not have suppressed data. Canton Public School District 2. Clarksdale Municipal School District 3. Clinton Public School District 4. Columbia School District East Jasper School District East Tallahatchie School District 7. Enterprise School District 8. Greene County School District Greenville Public School District Greenwood Public School District Grenada School District 12. Harrison County School District 13. Hattiesburg Public School District 14. Hazelhurst City School District 15. Hinds County School District A: NON-COLLABORATIVE PROGRAMS WITH DATA OMITTED 16. Houston School District 17. Lincoln County School District 18. Nettleton School District 19. Newton Municipal School District 20. North Panola School District 21. Pearl River County School District 22. Pontotoc County School District 23. Senatobia Municipal School District 24. Simpson County School District 25. Smith County School District 26. Stone County School District 27. Tate County School District 28. Wayne County School District*
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6.
5.
9.
11.
*Wayne County School District reported spring scores but no fall scores, so growth could not be calculated. They were excluded from all calculations of non-collaborative growth, both program-level and the overall, for this reason. However, they are in the overall average for non-collaborative spring score. We do not report Wayne County’s average spring score within the program-level tables due to a lack of growth score; however, it was 509.
APPENDIX
10.
STATE OF PRE-K SERIES: Public School and Collaborative Pre-K Programs and Kindergarten Readiness in 2017-2018 MISSISSIPPI FIRST I PAGE 12 Comparison of Non-Collaborative Program Groupings Using the 114- and 130-Point Growth Benchmarks SpringBelowScores498 Spring BetweenScores498and537 Spring Scores at or Above 538 Benchmark114-Point Score Growth Programs Score Growth Programs Score Growth Programs Below-AverageGrowth 451 49 (21) 520 85 (12) 552 106 (5) Above-AverageGrowth No programs met these criteria 528 125 (7) 580 160 (36) SpringBelowScores498 Spring BetweenScores498and537 Spring Scores at or Above 538 Benchmark130-Point Score Growth Programs Score Growth Programs Score Growth Programs Below-AverageGrowth 451 49 (21) 522 96 (17) 555 112 (9) Above-AverageGrowth No programs met these criteria 531 132 (2) 583 165 (32) PROGRAM SPRING SCORE GROWTH Claiborne County School District 536 126 Columbus Municipal School District 536 121 Noxubee County School District 529 116 Rankin County School District 525 125 Moss Point School District 510 120 PROGRAM SPRING SCORE GROWTH Lafayette County School District 573 125 Cleveland School District 573 124 Franklin County School District 546 114 Jefferson County School District 538 115 Programs with Scores Between 498 and 537 Affected by the Growth Benchmark (Growth Between 114 and 130) Programs with Scores at or Above 538 Affected by the Growth Benchmark (Growth Between 114 and 130) APPENDIX A: NON-COLLABORATIVE PROGRAMS WITH DATA OMITTED
iii Chad Allgood, conversation with Rachel Canter, November 16, 2020.
vii Li, Yan. 2018. Striving for Student Success: Impact of Early Learning Collaboratives Program in Mississippi. Research Summary, Jackson, MS: Mississippi Department of Education. Accessed March 15, 2021. https://www.mdek12.org/sites/default/files/Offices/MDE/OTSS/ORD/aefp43rd.pdf. Kraman, John, Dominico Parisi, and Yan Li. 2018. Impact of Pre-Kindergarten Programs on Student Performance in Early Schooling in the State of Mississippi. Presented at NCES STATS-DC Data Conference, Washington, DC, July 18 2018. Accessed March 15, 2021. https://www.mdek12.org/sites/default/files/Offices/MDE/OTSS/ORD/statsdc2018.pdf.
v Ibid. vi Southward, Linda, Connie Baird-Thomas, Ben Walker, John McCown, and Alison Patev. Increasing the Odds: Predictors of Academic Success for Mississippi’s Children. Research Brief, Starkville, MS: Social Science Research Center, Mississippi State University. September 2015.
ENDNOTES
Friedman-Krauss, Allison. 2017. “The State of Preschool 2016: Raising the Bar on Quality.” National Institute of Early Education Research, May 26. https://nieer.org/2017/05/26/state-preschool-2016-raising-bar-quality
ii Teachstone. 2017. Effective Teacher-Child Interactions and Child Outcomes: A Summary of Research on the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) Pre-K–3rd Grade. Research Report, Charlottesville, VA. Accessed March 15, https://aeiionline.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2020/03/CLASS-Outcomes-Summary.pdf2021.
STATE OF PRE-K SERIES: Public School and Collaborative Pre-K Programs and Kindergarten Readiness in 2017-2018 MISSISSIPPI FIRST I PAGE 13
iv Mississippi Department of Education. 2018. 2017-2018 Pre-Kindergarten Assessment Results for Early Learning Collaboratives and Other Four-Year-Old Classrooms. Data Report, Jackson, MS: Mississippi Department of Education. Accessed March 15, https://www.mdek12.org/sites/default/files/Offices/MDE/OEA/OPR/2018/2018_ELC_PK_Results_FY2018_Post-test_Final.pdf2021..
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