Predicting Third-Grade Math and English Language Arts Proficiency With the Early Development Instrument

• In Event: Excellence in Education Research: Early-Career Scholars and Their Work

Abstract

School readiness skills predict later educational achievement, health, and social outcomes. Population level indicators of school readiness reflect back on strategies and policies that prepare children for school and inform approaches to improve children’s educational trajectories as they progress through the school years. The Early Development Instrument (EDI), a teacher-reported measure based on observational recall, has been extensively used in Canada and Australia and is now being more widely used in the United States. The current study uses data from roughly 3,000 children followed longitudinally from kindergarten through third grade from 7 school districts in the large and diverse area of Orange County, California. The study assesses whether EDI ratings in kindergarten predict third grade proficiency in Mathematics and English Language Arts.

Consistent with prior findings from Canada and Australia, ratings on the EDI were strongly associated with proficiency in both academic areas, controlling for child-level factors (i.e., gender, English language proficiency status, race/ethnicity, and age) and neighborhood fixed effects. In particular, ratings on the language and cognitive development, communication skills and general knowledge, and social competence domains strongly differentiated children’s likelihood of later proficiency in both academic areas. For Mathematics, children coded as on track top in each of these domains were 86%, 82%, and 91% likely to reach proficiency, respectively. Conversely, children coded as vulnerable were only 35%, 41%, and 49% likely to reach proficiency in Mathematics, respectively. Very similar patterns of association were observed for both outcomes.

Implications for improving children’s school readiness and achievement are twofold. First, our findings provide support for the investment of early childhood education systems that aim to prepare children for school on a range of developmental processes. Even when controlling for child-level and neighborhood-level factors, strong differentiation occurred across the levels of EDI for children’s likelihood of later achievement proficiency. Second, our findings provide support for the investment of extra resources during the kindergarten through third grade years for children that begin behind on school readiness skills. Early schooling assessments can be indicative of which groups of children are in most need of additional resources before standardized testing begins. Ultimately, the goals of using population-based measures, such as the EDI, is to inform investments that aim to promote healthy and successful development in ways that will be reflected in improved EDI scores in communities over time.

Author

• Robert Duncan, University of California - Irvine