Alaska Native students are prepared for kindergarten

Children who are prepared to learn at the start of kindergarten will already have mastered a range of skills and abilities that are key building blocks for learning and will provide a foundation for later success. The Alaska Developmental Profile (ADP) was designed to help teachers assess individual students through observation, and develop learning plans for their kindergarten classrooms. The ADP evaluates students across five areas on a range of skills including health and motor skills, how they behave and express themselves in different settings, how they approach challenges, and what they know about numbers, shapes, language, letters, and communication. A score of 0 indicates a child demonstrates the skill 20 percent or less of the time, a score of 1 means a child is able to demonstrate the skill part of the time, and score of 2 shows a child consistently demonstrates a skill or behavior 80 percent or more of the time.

Using the ADP as a group or population measure is new and it was acknowledged in our 2014 baseline report that the indicator might change as our thinking about how to measure children’s skill development advanced. Recent data analysis has shown a combination of 1s and 2s that together equals a score of 20 has a strong correlation to academic success in third grade. On that basis, the ARISE leadership council chose to modify the indicator for this outcome. This change also aligns the ARISE measure with that used by 90% by 2020, a concurrent collective impact education initiative in Anchorage.