Page 53 - 2015 Compass Now

To ensure every child begins school on a path for success, the Minnesota Department of Education is
revising a decade-long School Readiness Study: Developmental Assessment at Kindergarten Entrance. The
purpose of the school readiness study is to assess entering kindergarten student proficiency across five
domains of child development. The sample for the study is selected randomly and is large enough to ensure
that the results are reliable and generalizable to the state population. The results of the study provide
information on school readiness that can be fed back to parents, school teachers and administrators,
childcare providers, policy makers, and the general public. During the 2012 assessment, 126 elementary
schools participated, with a total of 7,539 children12. This study was designed to capture a picture of the
readiness of Minnesota children who are entering kindergarten and to track their readiness over time. The
results from the 2012 study are summarized in Table 4. Students entering kindergarten in Wisconsin are
assessed early in the school year in accordance with K-12 standards.

Table 4: 2012 Minnesota Kindergarten Readiness

Child Development Domain Percent Proficient

Physical Development 73.3%

The Arts 61.7%

Personal & Social Development 60.3%

Language & Literacy 60.2%

Mathematical Thinking 57.6% EDUCATION

Source: Minnesota Department of Education: School Readiness

Note that categories are adjusted for stratified cluster sampling.

4K-12 Education

The 2015 COMPASS NOW Random Household Survey asked respondents to rate the quality of the 4K-12
schools in their community, and results are shown below in Figure 6. Approximately 41% of respondents
rated their 4K-12 schools as good and 32% rated schools as excellent.

100% Figure 6: Quality of 4K-12 Schools
80%
60% La Crosse Monroe Trempealeau Vernon Houston
40% 36.8%
20% 49.3% 25.0% 23.0% 32.4% 54.4%
0% 8.8%
44.5% 60.4% 59.0% 52.7%
Excellent
Good 6.2% 14.6% 18.0% 14.9%
Poor/Fair

Source: COMPASS NOW 2015 Random Household Survey

There are several measures of student assessment that Wisconsin and Minnesota use to measure student
attainment of subject-area proficiency. The Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination (WKCE)
and the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) were developed by educators and designed to
meet state and federal requirements and provide timely information that educators could use to inform

COMPASS NOW 2015 45