BackHome
Refresh: OffView Personal Schedule
Individual Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Measuring how Systems Support Kindergarten Transitions

Sat, March 25, 1:30 to 2:15pm, Salt Palace Convention Center, Floor: 2, Meeting Room 251 D

Abstract

Kindergarten is a major milestone for children and families. Although families and teachers provide primary supports for kindergarten transitions, the surrounding systems may also play a critical role. Early childhood and elementary school leaders can intentionally coordinate transition policies, professional supports, and practices within and across sending and receiving systems, encouraging alignment across the two systems. We hypothesize that when systems are aligned, transitions are smoother, and children benefit by building on the skills they acquired in preschool (Abry et al., 2015).

Head Start and K-12 system leaders have begun to craft policies and professional supports to facilitate coordination around children’s transition to kindergarten. For example, the Head Start Act requires grantees to collaborate with local education agencies (LEAs) and develop memoranda of understanding to ensure smooth kindergarten transitions. Similar types of collaborations are now required by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) for K-12 districts receiving Title I funds. However, the field currently lacks robust empirical evidence for which policies and practices best support transitions. In part, the dearth of research is due to the lack of sufficient measures that can capture the degree of coordination, collaboration, and alignment of kindergarten transition strategies both within and across Head Start and elementary school systems.

The current project begins to address the gap in research on systems-level kindergarten transition strategies by developing new survey items that operationalize kindergarten transition policies, perspectives, professional supports, and practices at two levels of both the Head Start and K-12 systems: the program/district administration level and the center/school administration level. Resulting tools will enable the field to ultimately measure system- and organization-level supports and examine how they relate to children’s experiences and development as they transition to kindergarten.

Methods
Item development went through several iterations (see Figure 1). We created initial items based on reviews of existing literature and measures, and items were informed by a theory of change. Revisions were then made after consultation with three content experts, three psychometricians, and two rounds of cognitive interviewing. Four Head Start Program leaders and four LEA administrators participated across the two rounds of cognitive interviews to ensure items were understandable and interpreted as intended.

Results
The Kindergarten Transition Systems Surveys (KTS2) are four surveys that contain items intended to document the current landscape of systems- and organization-level transition supports. The surveys acknowledge the two-sided nature of transitions and items probe transition strategies both within and across the systems. The surveys contain a core set of items in addition to supplemental survey items (see Table 1). The current version of the KTS2 is in the form of an item bank that allows researchers to construct their own survey or supplement an existing survey with new items.

Implications
The KTS2 will generate knowledge to help education practitioners, policy makers, and researchers understand current approaches to supporting Head Start to kindergarten transitions, facilitators and barriers to those approaches, and opportunities for improvement under various contexts. This is key to developing systems-level best practices for transitioning from Head Start to kindergarten.

Authors