Alliance and Canton Help Field Test State's New Kindergarten Entry Assessment (KEA)

The Alliance and Canton City Schools will help field test the new Kindergarten Entry Assessment (KEA) targeted to replace Ohio's Kindergarten Readiness Assessment-Literacy (KRA-L) in the fall of 2014.

 

First mandated in 2007 for all students entering kindergarten, the KRA-L was designed to help teachers assess early reading skills. The new KEA will assess kindergarten readiness skills in seven different domains, including social-emotional and physical/motor development, language and literacy, mathematical thinking, scientific thinking, social studies, and the arts. It will also serve as part of a larger Early Childhood Comprehensive Assessment System (EC-CAS)[1] which will include formative assessments for children ages 36-72 months.

 

EC-CAS is the result of a partnership between Ohio and Maryland that began in December 2011, when both states were awarded Race To The Top - Early Learning Challenge Grants to revise their kindergarten entry assessments and develop Pre-K and Kindergarten formative assessments. KEA field testing will take place in multiple kindergartens across both states through December when schools break for the Christmas holiday.