Overview

The Measures for Early Success Initiative, led by MDRC with foundational support from the Gates Foundation, aims to reimagine the landscape of early learning assessments for three- to five-year-olds in pre-K so that high-quality data can be used to meaningfully support and strengthen early learning experiences for all young children. Measures for Early Success seeks to support innovative solutions and develop scalable, comprehensive, and validated assessment tools of children’s developmental gains that are usable for all educators, children, and families in public pre-K settings.

A wave of federal and state investments aims to build high-quality, effective, and efficient early learning systems. Instrumental to achieving these goals is the availability of valid and reliable information about children’s needs, competencies, progress, and classroom experiences in pre-K. Yet this type of data is rarely collected as part of normal pre-K operations.

Three primary hurdles limit the range of information collected across pre-K systems, undermining critical opportunities to identify solutions that can support all children:

• Many existing child assessment tools have not been developed and validated using study samples that reflect the wide range of backgrounds and experiences of children in publicly funded pre-K programs.
• Existing tools are also often costly, burdensome to use, and do not always yield meaningful and timely insights to support educators, families, and young children’s learning.
• Most tools focus on narrow sets of skills that have not been consistently linked with longer-term indicators of success.

MDRC, in collaboration with Substantial, a human-centered design firm, engaged pre-K educators and families, as well as program leaders and administrators from federal, state, and local systems, to understand the current landscape of assessments in the pre-K space. In doing so, we identified how future assessment tools could better address the needs of these stakeholders and to inform design parameters for the development of next generation child assessment tools.

MDRC is currently collaborating with assessment developers to develop innovative tools in alignment with this vision. Project teams currently funded by the Measures for Early Success Initiative include: 

IGDILab and FableVision Studios: I-SPEAK is a preschool measure in English and Spanish that leverages a variety of interactive storybook narratives with embedded assessment prompts. It seeks to capture key developmental domains through stealth assessment techniques that honor children’s interests, experiences, and natural curiosity.

Khan Academy Kids: Khan Academy Kids is developing engaging, embedded learning assessments that will use existing content and modifications to Khan Academy Kids to capture information on young children’s abilities and share actionable data with administrators, educators, and families.

Additional organizations involved in the Measures for Early Success initiative have included: 

• Cognitive ToyBox
• Data Griot
• EarlyBird Education
• Hatch Early Learning
• Kibeam
• Mighty Play
• Mi'kmaw Kina'matnewey
• SoapBox Labs
• Sprig Learning
• St. Francis Xavier University
• TeachFX
• The Family Partnership
• Zeno Math