{"id":87414,"date":"2024-02-28T13:37:07","date_gmt":"2024-02-28T18:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/?p=87414"},"modified":"2024-12-18T13:43:02","modified_gmt":"2024-12-18T18:43:02","slug":"msde-adopts-new-kra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/msde-adopts-new-kra\/","title":{"rendered":"MSDE to Adopt New Kindergarten Assessment for School Readiness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE<\/span><\/p>\n

MEDIA CONTACT:
<\/span>Alex Reese, 443-826-3819<\/span>
<\/span> alex.reese@maryland.gov<\/span><\/a>

<\/span><\/p>\n

MSDE to Adopt New Kindergarten Assessment for School Readiness<\/b><\/h2>\n

Study concluded current KRA indicates potential bias.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

BALTIMORE (February 28, 2024) <\/b>\u2013 The Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) will be moving away from the current Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (KRA) after a study indicated potential bias in the current assessment against multilingual learners.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHaving an unbiased KRA assessment is an extremely important measure,\u201d said Dr. Carey Wright, Interim State Superintendent of Schools. \u201cIt is part of the MSDE strategic plan, the Blueprint for Maryland\u2019s Future, and Governor Wes Moore\u2019s newly released strategic plan.\u00a0MSDE is committed to implementing a KRA assessment without biases as soon as possible in accordance with the Accountability and Implementation Board\u2019s Blueprint Comprehensive Plan and Maryland law.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The KRA measures language and literacy, mathematics, social foundations, and physical well-being and motor development to determine school readiness of incoming kindergarteners. The assessment is administered to incoming kindergarteners during the first few months of school.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Maryland law calls for a kindergarten assessment for school readiness that is free of racial, cultural, or linguistic bias. The Blueprint for Maryland\u2019s Future requires an analysis of potential bias in the current Kindergarten Readiness Assessment. To meet this requirement, MSDE commissioned a study led by WestEd in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Center for Technology in Education to evaluate the results from the fall 2022 administration of the KRA.<\/span><\/p>\n

The <\/span>Report on the Evaluation of Racial, Cultural, or Linguistic Bias<\/span><\/i> in the KRA<\/span><\/i><\/a>, <\/span><\/i>submitted by MSDE to the Accountability and Implementation Board on Tuesday, February 27, analyzed groups of Maryland kindergarten students by gender, race\/ethnicity, English language proficiency, socioeconomic status, and special education status. <\/span>The report noted that <\/span>some aspects of the current KRA, and in particular some items, need to be reviewed and evaluated for implicit bias toward students from various racial, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Wright said, \u201c<\/span>MSDE will be considering all options for adopting in a timely manner a kindergarten assessment for school readiness that is unbiased.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Results from the KRA administered in Fall 2023 are expected to be released by Wednesday, March 6 on the <\/span>Maryland Report Card website<\/span><\/a>.

<\/span><\/p>\n

###<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Updated: March 13, 2024<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) will be moving away from the current Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (KRA) after a study indicated potential bias in the current assessment against multilingual learners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":244,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,5,9,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mediaalert","category-news","category-newsreleases","category-overview"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/244"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87414"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87415,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87414\/revisions\/87415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}