This report addresses three primary research questions about the performance of the 2015-16 kindergarten student cohort over time:
- How did student performance on the aimswebPlus assessment change between kindergarten (2015-16) and third grade (2018-19) for the 2015-16 kindergarten cohort?
- How did student performance on the aimswebPlus assessment change between kindergarten and third grade by demographic characteristics for the kindergarten cohort?
- How did student performance on the aimswebPlus assessment change between kindergarten and third grade grouped by third grade ELA PSSA performance for the 2015-16 kindergarten cohort?
Key Findings include:
- Of the over 12,000 kindergarten students enrolled in SDP schools in 2015-16, only a quarter (4,194) took the aimswebPlus core reading assessment in fall and spring each year between 2015-16 and 2018-19 and also took the PSSA English Language Arts (ELA) exam in Spring 2019.
- On average, students ended third grade by performing in the same aimswebPlus performance group as they did in kindergarten.
- Although English Learners (ELs) had lower average aimswebPlus performance than their non-EL counterparts across the four years, ELs had the same average performance starting kindergarten as at the end of third grade, while non-ELs declined in their average aimswebPlus performance across the four years.
- Overall, students in the analytic sample who scored in the Advanced category on the third grade ELA PSSA had higher aimswebPlus performance in third grade than in kindergarten, while students who scored in the Below Basic and Basic categories on the ELA PSSA had lower aimswebPlus performance in third grade than in kindergarten.