In this October 2024 data report(*1) of the Virginia Kindergarten Readiness Program (VKRP) to the General Assembly, we report on the fall and spring kindergarten data collected during the 2023–2024 academic year, kindergarten data trends from fall 2019 through spring 2024, and 2023–2024 pre-kindergarten data for three and four-year-old publicly-funded pre-kindergarten students. The report also provides an update on the progress of the VKRP Mid-year Assessment Pilot, an update on the mathematics, self-regulation, social skills, and mental health well-being assessment pilot in first through third Grades (1-3 Assessment Pilot) and shares future goals of the VKRP system for the 2024–2025 year and beyond.

VKRP empowers Virginia’s teachers and education leaders by providing a more comprehensive assessment system that shines a spotlight on pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students’ learning and growth. VKRP is a Virginia standards-aligned, multi-year early learning assessment system that produces actionable information to guide decisions at the student, classroom, school/program, and division levels from the beginning of prekindergarten through the end of kindergarten to support student learning. VKRP provides assessments of mathematics, self-regulation, and social skills to complement Virginia’s longstanding literacy screeners. In 2020–2021, during the pandemic, VKRP also added items for teachers to indicate their perceptions of students’ mental health well-being. The 2023–2024 literacy data gathered from the Phonological Awareness Literacy Screener (PALS-K) measure and the Virginia Language & Literacy Screener: Pre-K (VALLS: Pre-K) come directly from Virginia Literacy Partnerships (VLP). Literacy data in this 2023-2024 report includes the PALS-K which was used in 114 divisions. Literacy data from the 17 divisions that piloted the Virginia Language & Literacy Screener: K (VALLS: K) are not included in this report. Additional information on the literacy screeners can be found on the VLP website.

From 2014 through 2018, the Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) at the University of Virginia implemented VKRP in kindergarten through a voluntary rollout where, each year, an increasing number of school divisions elected to administer VKRP. Virginia began statewide, mandatory kindergarten administration of VKRP in the 2019–2020 school year.

The VKRP team developed a 4-year-old pre-kindergarten extension of VKRP between 2018–2021. In the 2021–2022 school year, VKRP became available to all publicly-funded pre-kindergarten programs to assess 4-year-old children’s skills in fall of 2021 and spring of 2022. Additionally, the VKRP team developed a 3-year-old extension of VKRP, which became available to all publicly-funded pre-kindergarten programs to assess 3-year-old children’s skills in the 2022–2023 school year.

Defining Readiness for Summative Data Purposes

Virginia defines school readiness as, “the capabilities of children, their families, schools, and communities that best promote student success in kindergarten and beyond." For summative purposes, kindergarten students are categorized as ready or meeting the overall benchmark (fall) or meeting the overall benchmark (spring) if their assessment scores indicate that they demonstrate the minimally expected skills for the fall or the spring (depending upon the data timepoint) of kindergarten for literacy, mathematics, self-regulation, and social skills. If a kindergarten student’s assessment scores do not indicate they are demonstrating the minimally expected skill in one or more areas at the respective timepoint (fall or spring), they are categorized as not ready or below the overall benchmark (fall) or below the overall benchmark (spring).

VKRP does not publish benchmarks for pre-kindergarten children’s skills. Instead, starting in the 2022–2023 school year, in pre-kindergarten, VKRP piloted Skill Development Bands (Beginning, Growing, and Strong) to help programs, educators, and families interpret and use VKRP pre-kindergarten data. Separate bands were established for the fall and spring to represent children’s skill development as compared to expectations at that particular point in time. VLP has created separate skill development bands for the VALLS: Pre-K, and the VLP team can provide more information about the VALLS: Pre-K bands. These bands are included to give guidance on where children are in their development of early learning skills so that teachers can provide appropriate support and instruction. They are not intended to serve as benchmarks.

The mental health well-being items are not part of the overall benchmark in kindergarten or skill development bands in pre-kindergarten. Information from these items is shared with teachers to help facilitate conversations between teachers, instructional leaders, school counselors, other school personnel, and families on how best to support students.

VKRP and the COVID-19 Pandemic

During the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, young students experienced sudden and long-lasting negative stresses to their care and early learning environments, negatively impacting their academic and social-emotional school readiness. Nationally and within the Commonwealth, there were missed opportunities to learn foundational early mathematics and literacy skills, pandemic-related learning losses, and adverse impacts on young students’ mental health well-being. The pandemic had disproportionate impacts on students from families with low-income backgrounds and students who resided in neighborhoods with decreased access to early learning opportunities (World Bank, 2023(*2) ). Importantly, if students are not provided with opportunities to catch up and these losses are not addressed, gaps in students’ early learning skills will continue to widen over time (World Bank, 2023(*2)). VKRP collects data on students’ early learning, social-emotional skills, and mental health well-being that can be used to understand early learning trends across time and inform investments.

How Statewide VKRP Data Can Be Used in Virginia

VKRP highlights the strengths of Virginia’s pre-kindergarten and kindergarten children, bringing attention to areas where students need support to maximize their learning. For teachers and school personnel, VKRP data can help drive day-to-day instruction, guide conversations with families, and inform decisions about educators’ professional development needs. At the state level, VKRP data informs policy decisions and helps identify schools, programs, divisions, and regions that may need more support or can serve as exemplars. VKRP can be used by various stakeholders to better understand and support students’ academic and social-emotional learning and development, as well as their mental health well-being.
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(*1) This report is submitted to satisfy the requirement that "the Department shall submit such findings using data from the prior year's fall assessment to the Chairmen of House Appropriations and Senate Finance Committees no later than October 1 each year.
(*2) Schady, N.; Holla, A.; Sabarwal, S.; Silva, J.; & Yi Chang, A. (2023.) Collapse and recovery: How the COVID-19 pandemic eroded human capital and what to do about it. © Washington, DC: World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/39403 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.