Kindergarten Essential Skills Assessment in the Kindergarten Programs

The purpose of the Kindergarten Essential Skills Assessment is to distinguish children who might be at the risk of academic failures such as retention or special education referral. The KESA does it by measuring the critical skills of the kids and predict it by the end of the year. The test has to be taken in a large room in order to let the child demonstrate motor skills. The Standardization sample for the KESA targets 486 kids at the age of 0 to 4 through 5 to 11 years. The people who gathered the data for the standardization were forty-eight examiners school psychologists, speech pathologists, occupational therapists, and early childhood educators. Additionally, the examiner eliminated forms that were incomplete or unusable. The KESA involves items that measure five areas, such as cognitive and general knowledge, social and emotional development, motor development, language development, and approaches to learning. All these areas are related to academic success. Each one of the regions assessed different items. Cognitive and general knowledge was passed items that addressed letter naming, color naming, number competence, and visual memory. The social and emotional development has assessed the items that measured self-regulatory skills, which also included behavioral inhibition. Motor development assessed items such as gross motor, fine motor, visual-motor integration, and fine motor planning skills. The language development was assed items the measured phonological awareness skills and expressive vocabulary. And the approaches to learning had items that assed persistence, attention, and the capability to obey directions. The KESA contains 73 items over 11 areas. Additionally, the standard score of the test yields a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. The areas that can be obtained in the standard score were percentile rank, age equivalent, and standard score confidence interval. Additionally, the only things that were not provided score were particular areas and the cause of skill deficits.

The test itself takes 25 to 30 minutes to conduct and 5 to 10 minutes to score the KESA. The points that earned should be circled on the protocol, and there is total score points on each page. Additionally, on the end page of the protocol, the examiner could record observations, strengths, weaknesses, and recommendations. Another instrument that can help is a Parent Questionnaire test. This test can help to gather more information about the child and the way he/she react and interact at home. The Parent Questionnaire contains thirteen questions, which included family readiness variables. The Parent Questionnaire test can be accomplished either in an interview format or in written form. The written form has to be completed by the parents before or during the screening process. The KESA test was developed the pre-kindergarten screen (PKS). The reason for that was to improve the performance of the items on the KESA. Some of the items were deleted or added based on feedback from educators and test users. Additionally, a specific model was used to indicate any item biases. The results showed that the KESA is not biased in genders such as residence, ethnicity, and Hispanic origin.

The KESA reliability was based on three sources of error, such as internal consistency, Alpha coefficients, temporal stability, and test-retest. The correlation coeffect for standard scores in the KESA test-retest was. 89 and retest interval that extended from 15 -18 days. The reason or using the consistency was to examine how many test errors occur according to variability score. The consistency score indicated an interrater reliability coefficient of almost. 99. The validity of the KESA indicated There were five sources of validity that were identified and discussed in the Standards. The sources were “evidence-based on test content, evidence-based on response processes, evidence-based on internal structures, evidence-based on relations to other variables, and evidence for validity and consequences of testing.” Additionally, three types of validity were proof, content-based, criterion- prediction validity, and relationships to other variables such as age and disability group status. The content-based validity was explored through factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. The results indicated that a single factor describes the best skills measures, and the information provided evidence of content validity. The criterion prediction validity was confirmed based on predictive accuracy analyses and shows that the KESA score can indicate kindergarten success. There are several strengths in the KESA. For example, the KESA is research-based that includes items that show success among kindergarten. Additionally, it covers academic skills, such as phonemic awareness, vocabulary, and the ability to recognize letters and numbers. Furthermore, measures are motor skills, behavioral regulation, visual memory, visual attention, and the ability to comprehend and follow oral directions.