Researchers from the Curry School of Education’s Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) have partnered with Elevate Early Education (E3), an early education advocacy group, to study school readiness in Virginia kindergartners. The Virginia Kindergarten Readiness Project (VKRP) is piloting Teaching Strategies GOLD®, a comprehensive, teacher-administered kindergarten readiness assessment identified by Virginia policymakers for potential statewide use.
This fall, kindergarten teachers in Bristol, Wise, Salem, and Chesapeake are using Teaching Strategies GOLD® to measure their students’ school readiness skills across multiple dimensions, including social-emotional, math, physical, language, and literacy. At the same time, independent CASTL-trained data collectors are assessing children’s skills in the same areas using well-established direct assessments. After teachers and data collectors have administered the tests across all participating classrooms, UVA researchers will examine the extent to which their scores are related. Data collection will continue next fall in order to provide a statewide estimate of kindergarten children’s readiness skills across critical domains of learning in order to more comprehensively define the readiness gap. The data from VKRP will be used to help inform Virginia’s public policy decisions regarding investments in early childhood education.
Read more about the Virginia Kindergarten Readiness Project on E3’s website.