Kindergartners come to school from diverse backgrounds. Some have been in group daycare since infancy. Others have never experienced a formal group setting. Others fall somewhere in between. Their preparedness for kindergarten varies accordingly.
Increasingly, schools are using kindergarten readiness assessments, or KRAs, for a snapshot of individual kindergartners’ preparedness. As of 2024, 27 states required school districts to administer a kindergarten entry assessment during the 2023–2024 school year. Some states and districts require screenings before children enter kindergarten; others add assessments throughout the year.
As these tools are becoming more common, they’re not without controversy. Advocates point to the data they collect as useful for guiding classroom instruction and identifying students who may need special resources. Critics—many of them teachers—argue that the tests waste valuable instruction time, aren’t developmentally appropriate for 4- and 5-year-olds, and fail to provide information that observant teachers can’t gather simply by spending time with their students in class.
A new assessment piloted in 70 Minnesota public schools this school year addresses some of these concerns.
The Minnesota Kindergarten Fall Assessment, or MnKFA, relies on educators observing students as they go about their normal daily routines—rather than one-on-one evaluations in front of a computer or with pencil and paper.
The MnKFA, which state officials stress isn’t an accountability measure or a traditional kindergarten readiness test, came out of 2023 state legislation that directed the Minnesota department of education to develop an assessment providing a snapshot of student capabilities upon kindergarten entry. The assessment will aim to gather information not just on academic readiness skills like phonemic awareness and numeracy, but also on students’ social-emotional development and approach to learning, such as their ability to solve problems.
Education Week spoke with Danielle Hayden, director of early education for the Minnesota department of education, who was instrumental in the MnKFA’s design. She explained how Minnesota’s new kindergarten assessment differs from conventional models, why it reframes kindergarten preparedness, and what implications its results could have—across school systems and for individual families.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What’s the driver behind this new kindergarten assessment?
It was really an opportunity to recognize that our children are coming from a variety of different environments and opportunities before they ever walk through kindergarten doors. And we, as a state, didn’t really have a way of measuring universally, how students or children in that age band are actually doing. In Minnesota, we have really steered away from the readiness language because we feel there has been so much put on the children, who don’t actually have the ability to affect the systems that serve them.
A couple of years ago, my team developed something called the Successful Learning Equation. It acknowledges that it’s important for our education systems, our communities, and our families to set kids up for success—and not to think about kids in terms of a checklist or a box that they need to fit in to be successful, or ready, so to speak. That’s what has carried us through the development and design of this assessment.
How does this kindergarten assessment differ from others?
We committed very clearly to wanting this to be a very developmentally-based investment. We wanted it to be authentic, meaning we were delivering it through observations, through normal classroom routines, versus a ‘sit down and do something with paper and pencil’ assessment.
We also wanted it to be as inclusive as possible. We didn’t want it to be a contextual tool where, if a kiddo wasn’t in a structured environment prior to walking through kindergarten doors, they’d be at a disadvantage right off the bat.
What does the assessment measure?
It consists of four “domains of learning”: language, literacy, and communications; foundational math; social and emotional development; and approaches to learning.
What do you mean by ‘approaches to learning’?
Approaches to learning is really an indicator of progress to describe some of those cognitive skills around problem solving; to see how students are asking questions and wondering and showing curiosity. It kind of captures how they’re engaging in learning.
Who provided input for the assessment?
It was a team approach based on members of my team, in the department of early childhood at the [state’s] department of education, in coordination with our special education division, our standards and assessment division, and our colleagues in early learning services at the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families.
There was also about a year and a half of pretty significant stakeholder engagement with teachers, administrators, and families. We even interviewed kindergartners, asking questions like what it meant to be a kindergartner in their class, in their school, and what are the things that they liked about school? What are the things that were hard or challenging?
We pulled in people from all of those different pockets to inform what we wanted this to look like and be like, and what purpose we wanted it to serve. And then what, aspirationally, do we want to be able to do to support our schools around it?
How many students will take the new assessment this fall?
We have about 45 districts and charters represented, which amounts to around 70 schools. We’re hoping to reach between 2,000 and 3,000 students. It’ll give us a really good sampling that’s demographically representative of our state.
How did you choose schools to participate in the pilot program?
We didn’t want to assign this. We wanted people who are eager to try something new and eager to help formulate how we support them in administering it. So we asked for volunteers from district and charter leadership, but we didn’t require the entirety of a school district or school to participate. What was more important to us was that we had demographically representative participation.
Who ultimately designed the assessment?
Through a competitive process, we selected Teaching Strategies, a curriculum provider. They’re used in a lot of states for kindergarten assessment, and they’ve long been a vendor we’ve used in the early childhood space in Minnesota.
Does the state mandate other early learning assessments and, if so, will this replace any of them?
Minnesota has something called an early childhood screening tool; it’s a screening tool, not an assessment tool administered by our school districts. It’s required to enroll in kindergarten, and it’s an opportunity for kiddos between the ages of 3 and 5 to be looked at from a health and development lens. The intent is really to ensure that we catch kids prior to their kindergarten enrollment who may need to be connected with school-based resources or community resources and health resources. So that’s kind of a universal screening that’s done prior to kindergarten.
There’s also the Minnesota READ Act, which requires mandatory screening of every child in kindergarten using a screening tool approved by the Minnesota Department of Education. Screening must be completed three times per year: within the first six weeks of the school year, by February 15 each year, and within the last six weeks of the school year. It measures foundational reading skills.
It’s possible that districts will modify their current practices as they implement the MnKFA.
How much time do you expect it will take teachers to complete these assessments?
We don’t have a concrete estimate yet, because we’ll be collecting a lot of that information during the pilot. Entering data into the system for each child is actually very quick. But knowing that this will be the first time that teachers are really doing a more observation- based assessment, it’s going to take a little bit of time for them to set up systems and processes in their classroom to do this.
How will the assessment benefit teachers?
The assessment is generally going to tell teachers how students are showing up in our kindergarten space over the course of that first few weeks. It gives us an opportunity to help teachers to really focus on these questions: Where are your students, developmentally? And what are the things that you can be doing in your classroom to support what that profile looks like for your classroom?
We’re trying to shift the focus and energy around kindergarten readiness to allow us to think about kids from a developmental space and a transitional space, meaning the transition from early care and education settings into kindergarten, which is our first universally available educational setting for young children in Minnesota.
Any other ways you expect teachers to use the results?
We want teachers to be able to use this assessment for support as they talk to families when there are [student] concerns. I’m an early childhood person. I was an early childhood special ed teacher, and so I am steadfast in the belief that we have to give parents enough information so that they can better understand their child’s needs as they’re showing up in their school spaces, and how they can be supporting their children at home. And we [educators] have to give them concrete ways to do that. And so that’s something we’re striving to do.
We know that it’s not just one thing that’s resulting in our children showing up the way that they’re showing up [to school]. And in order for us to help with that, we have to think about it from a systems standpoint. And we really have to have the hard conversations around things like: What are the things that our families are having to navigate? What environments are our children spending time in? And, are there ways for us to support those environments?
What final takeaway can you share about the MnKFA?
With the emphasis on standardized testing that has been going on for years, I think what families are hearing is that it’s really important that your children know the ABC’s and the one, two, threes. And I think that foundational skills have gotten lost in the narrative. And so we’re trying to re-focus the narrative and help families understand that, yes, ultimately, we want your child reading at grade level by 3rd grade, and here are the foundational skills and development that happen to support that trajectory.
