Does Using School Readiness Assessments for Class Placements Lead to Academic Sorting in Kindergarten?

• In Event: 69.056 - Roundtable Session 31
  In Roundtable Session: 69.056-1 - Financing Early Childhood Education and Estimating Its Effects

Abstract

The use of kindergarten readiness assessments for classroom placement decisions has increased by nearly 50% over the last decade; however, there is little research on whether such use is serving to sort students into more or less homogenous classroom settings. Given a wide body of evidence on the impacts of ability grouping and tracking, understanding the implications of such use is important. We utilize nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study of 2011 to estimate the relationship between readiness assessment use for classroom placement and the distribution of students across classrooms. Using HLM models, we find little evidence that such use has increased the cross-class sorting of students by ability. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

Authors

• Chris Curran, University of Maryland - Baltimore County

• Michael Harris Little, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Lora A. Cohen-Vogel, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill