Princeton & Brookings’ The Future of Children brief highlights the traumatic impact of COVID-19 on children’s social-emotional health and learning. With 84% of Virginia kindergarteners engaged in virtual instruction in the 2020/2021 school year, data collected from the Virginia Kindergarten Readiness Program brought attention to the academic and social-emotional support needed by students amidst the pandemic.
- In fall 2021, 45% of Virginia’s kindergarteners needed support to build foundational skills in literacy, math, self-regulation and social skills.
- Teachers reported that they were either moderately, very or extremely concerned about the mental health and well being of approximately 11% of kindergarten students.
- 52% of Virginia’s kindergarteners ended the 2021 school year still needing to build foundational skills in literacy, math, self-regulation, and/or social skills – a seven percentage point increase from Fall 2020.
- Young children’s learning suffered as a result of the pandemic.
Policymakers and elected officials at the state and local levels used the real-time information from VKRP to improve COVID-19 response efforts including increased access to early childhood programming; early literacy, math and social-emotional support; and mental health programming. Read the full Princeton & Brookings brief here.
VKRP is now included in all publicly-funded preschool programs and is currently being evaluated in the General Assembly for use in grades 1-3 to give Virginia a longitudinal look at how our students are performing from pre-k through 3rd grade.
The Research Practice Partnership between E3, UVA, VDOE and policymakers that took VKRP from a pilot assessment in 100 classrooms to a statewide kindergarten assessment tool for teachers, parents, schools and early learning programs highlights E3’s collaborative and data-driven approach to solving BIG problems in education. Innovation and impact at work.