Kindergarten School Readiness Data Collection FAQs

FAQs

1. What is school readiness?

School Readiness promotes a start early approach to school. With a strong, early start Colorado children will be more likely to continually succeed in school. School Readiness supports teachers’ ability to create responsive learning environments that ensure academic and developmental growth for students. This includes promoting awareness of developmentally appropriate practices (DAP) that support hands-on learning experiences and challenges students’ thinking.

2. Why is this collection required?

This collection started as a result of the passage of the Colorado Achievement Plan for Kids (CAP4K) in 2008, which requires that school readiness data be reported to CDE. Then, in 2016, the State Board of Education approved a reporting system for the data, which led to the creation of this collection.

3. What steps do I need to complete to finalize this collection?

Steps to Complete the KSR Collection. There are three parts to this collection:

Please visit the Kindergarten School Readiness Data Collection website. The documents and training sessions for the Collection are updated and posted on that page.

4. Who can I contact for more information?

If you are a data respondent who has a more technical question about the collection, such as something relating to file submission or CDE Data Pipeline, please contact Tanna George or call 720-595-1490.

If you have general school readiness questions or are a kindergarten teacher or administrator who has a question about the completion of the Kindergarten Entry Assessment (KEA) survey in GOLD®, please contact Megan Rogers or call 720-326-2880.

5. Do I need to include the charter schools authorized by our district?

Yes, districts are reminded to include the charter schools they authorize when submitting their data to CDE. The district can submit all data at once or add the data from the charter schools through an append process.

6. Do charter schools with school readiness assessment waivers need to submit data to their districts?

Charter schools may apply to waive the use of a State Board-approved school readiness assessment. In their waiver request, schools must explain how they will meet the intent of the law for assessing kindergarten students. The waivers received by the department have only been for the use of a State Board-approved school readiness assessment tool. None have included a request to waive any of the other requirements within section 22-7-1014 C.R.S. Charter schools with waivers submit their data to their authorizing district, who then, in turn, submits the data to CDE.

7. Can individual schools submit their school readiness data to Data Pipeline?

Access to CDE's Data Pipeline cannot be given to individual schools for privacy reasons. A district data respondent must submit data for the entire district.

8. How do School Readiness Assessments and READ Assessments work together?

The State Board of Education approved format for School Readiness data collection calls for data to be reported in 6 areas. These are the areas outlined in legislation with general knowledge broken out into 2 areas: Math and Literacy. If a READ Act assessment is administrated within the first 60 calendar days of the school year, the READ Act assessment can be used to inform or fulfill the literacy component of the school readiness assessment (HB 15-1323). While data from READ assessments can be used to inform all, or a portion of the literacy area of the school readiness assessment, the literacy area of the school readiness assessment must be completed in order to automatically aggregate the school readiness report within the assessment systems. It is not required for the literacy area to be reassessed or to administer the literacy component of the school readiness assessment if using READ assessment information.

9. Where can I learn more about the report Teaching Strategies developed that will allow districts to automatically aggregate and report on the state board approved data reporting elements?

Step-by-step directions are available for Generating the Colorado Kindergarten Readiness Report (PDF) in MyTeachingStrategies™. Teaching Strategies has also provided answers to Frequently Asked Questions (PDF) about the report.
Information is available on the calculations for the Kindergarten Entry Readiness Benchmark expectations.   

10. Is there a student-level report in GOLD® too?

Yes, there are several reports in MyTeachingStrategies™ that include student-level information for local use. One example is the Snapshot report.

11. Can the Colorado Kindergarten Readiness Report report be run for all schools in a district at once?

The report in MyTeachingStrategies™ can be generated once with all schools in the district included and available in a single file export. Alternatively, the report can be generated separately for each school. The district can submit all schools’ data at once or add the data from schools through an append process.

12. The report generated from MyTeachingStrategies™ only populates data in the SES Eligible Free and Reduced Lunch column. Why won’t the SES Not Eligible for Free and Reduced Lunch and SES Eligibility Unknown for Free and Reduced Lunch columns populate data? 

The Kindergarten School Readiness collection is required to include data disaggregated by school, free and reduced lunch eligibility status, race/ethnicity, and gender. At this time, the child record in MyTeachingStrategies™ is a single field to indicate the child is free and reduced lunch eligible and will only populate data for this single column. The blank columns for not eligible and eligibility unknown will be accepted this year and will not produce errors in Data Pipeline. In the future, Teaching Strategies will expand the fields in the child record to include all three options: eligible for free and reduced lunch, not eligible for free and reduced lunch, and eligibility unknown for free and reduced lunch.

13. Can a teacher or other GOLD users see a child’s lunch eligibility status in the MyTeachingStrategies™ system?

No, teachers and view-only administrators cannot see a child’s lunch eligibility within MyTeachingStrategies™ or on the reports generated.

14. There is a district level and school level report available in MyTeachingStrategies™, do I need to submit both in Data Pipeline?

No, only the school level report needs to be submitted in Data Pipeline and therefore only the school level report needs to be generated in MyTeachingStrategies ™. There is a district-level report available in MyTeachingStrategies™ as an extra feature for district use.