In the latest Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy whitepaper, researchers present the results of a survey completed by Ohio teachers concerning their perceptions of Ohio's Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (KRA).
Researchers examined teachers’ perceptions during year two of the KRA implementation and compared those results to findings from a similar survey completed in year one of the assessment implementation.
More than 3,000 Ohio public school kindergarten teachers were invited to complete the survey; of which 841 responded. In year two, teachers reported that administering the KRA was easier, compared to year one. However, they expressed concerns that the assessment took too long to administer, distracted from creating a classroom community, and decreased instructional time.
Similar to findings from year one, teachers reported that the assessment was not useful for guiding instruction or otherwise benefiting students; yet, teachers did report an increase in using the KRA to identify students at risk for later academic problems. In contrast to year one, teachers seemed to better understand the purposes of the assessment although there were still some remaining misconceptions. The results suggest that although teachers seem to better understand the purposes of the assessment, they continued to express concerns with the KRA's implementation and remained unclear as to its role in improving student outcomes.
