Contents
Why this study? 1
Research questions 3
Findings 5
Implications 13
Limitations 14
References 15
Appendix A. About the Kindergarten Individual Development Survey 17
Appendix B. Methods 21
Appendix C. Supporting analyses 31
Table 1. Kindergarten Individual Development Survey items, the domains they measure, and associated factor loadings 6
Table 2. Descriptive statistics of scores for the two domains that the Kindergarten Individual Development Survey measures, fall 2017 administration in Illinois 7
Figure 1. Kindergarteners in Illinois who were not eligible for the national school lunch program had higher average scores than kindergarteners who were eligible, for both domains on the Kindergarten... 8
Figure 2. Girls in kindergarten in Illinois had higher average scores than boys for both domains on the Kindergarten Individual Development Survey, fall 2017 administration in Illinois 8
Figure 3. Non-English learner kindergarteners in Illinois had higher average scores than English learner kindergarteners for both domains on the Kindergarten Individual Development Survey,... 9
Figure 4. Kindergarteners in Illinois who were not eligible for an individualized education program had higher average scores than kindergarteners who were eligible, for both domains on the Kindergarten... 10
Figure 5. White and Asian kindergarteners in Illinois had higher average scores than Black and Hispanic kindergarteners for both domains on the Kindergarten Individual Development Survey,... 11
Boxes
Box 1. Key terms 2
Box 2. Data sources, sample, and methods 4
Table A1. Description of the 14 required items in the Kindergarten Individual Development Survey provided to teachers when rating children, fall 2017 administration in Illinois 18
Table B1. Demographic characteristics of children in the analytic sample and the entire 2017/18 Illinois kindergarten cohort for the fall 2017 administration of the Kindergarten Individual... 21
Table B2. Description of the interview sample of kindergarten teachers and school principals related to the fall 2017 administration of the Kindergarten Individual Development Survey in Illinois 26
Table C1. Detailed findings on the goodness of fit for different factor structures based on confirmatory factor analyses of the fall 2017 administration of the Kindergarten Individual Development... 32
Table C2. Summary of factor invariance results for the fall 2017 administration of the Kindergarten Individual Development Survey in Illinois 33
Table C3. Items from the fall 2017 administration of the Kindergarten Individual Development Survey in Illinois that functioned differently for one subgroup relative to another 34
Table C4. Differential item functioning summary for the learning and social skills domain of the fall 2017 administration of the Kindergarten Individual Development Survey in Illinois 35
Table C5. Differential item functioning summary for the academic knowledge and skills domain of the fall 2017 administration of the Kindergarten Individual Development Survey in Illinois 36
Table C6. Results of multilevel model testing of the association between school-level poverty and child-level scores for the learning and social skills domain of the fall 2017 administration of the Kindergarten... 39
Table C7. Results of multilevel model testing of the association between school-level poverty and child-level scores for the academic knowledge and skills domain of the fall 2017 administration... 40
Figure A1. Example of the item definition, rating categories, rating category definitions, and examples provided to teachers when rating children for the Kindergarten Individual Development Survey,... 19
Figure C1. Scree plot from exploratory factor analysis for the fall 2017 administration of the Kindergarten Individual Development Survey in Illinois 31
Figure C2. Distribution of scores for the learning and social skills domain of the fall 2017 administration of the Kindergarten Individual Development Survey in Illinois 37
Figure C3. Distribution of scores for the academic knowledge and skills domain of the fall 2017 administration of the Kindergarten Individual Development Survey in Illinois 38
Figure C4. Visualization of the association between school-level poverty and child-level scores for the learning and social skills domain of the fall 2017 administration of the Kindergarten Individual... 39
Figure C5. Visualization of the association between school-level poverty and child-level scores for the academic knowledge and skills domain of the fall 2017 administration of the Kindergarten... 40
Appendix Boxes
Box B1. Interview protocol for teachers 27
Box B2. Interview protocol for principals 28