The Georgia Kindergarten Inventory of Developing Skills (GKIDS) was developed with two purposes. First, GKIDS serves as a replacement for the previous kindergarten assessment, the Georgia Kindergarten Assessment Program-Revised (GKAP-R). Second, GKIDS was designed to meet the requirement of the Quality Basic Education Act that all children enrolled in Georgia public school kindergarten programs be assessed for first- grade readiness with an instrument adopted by the State Board of Education. State Board of Education Testing Rule 160-3-1-.07 and O.C.G.A., Section 20-2-151(b)(2) requires all Georgia school systems to make first-grade placement decisions on an individual basis, using GKIDS results in concert with teacher recommendations and other relevant information. The administration of GKIDS began with the 2008-2009 school year.

GKIDS is a yearlong, performance-based assessment. The goal of the assessment is to provide teachers with information about the level of instructional support needed by individual students during the kindergarten year. The primary purpose of GKIDS is to provide ongoing diagnostic information about kindergarten students’ developing skills in the academic domains of Georgia Standards of Excellence (GSE) English Language Arts (ELA) and GSE Mathematics, based on the state’s rigorous content standards, as well as two non-academic domains that address students’ Approaches to Learning and Personal/Social Development. GKIDS allows teachers to assess student performance during instruction, record student performance in an on-line database, and generate reports for instructional planning, progress reports, report cards, student support team meetings, and/or parent conferences. Throughout the school year, teachers may assess students and record the data based on their system’s curriculum map or report card schedule.

Teachers evaluate each content standard element within the academic domains using two to five of the performance levels: Not Yet Demonstrated, Emerging, Progressing, Meets the Standard, or Exceeds the Standard. The non-academic categories are evaluated using the performance levels of Area of Concern, Developing, or Consistently Demonstrating. Results for GKIDS are reported as the average percent of elements achieved by students.

KEY FINDINGS

English Language Arts (ELA)

• On average, Clayton’s kindergarten students met or exceeded 71.2% of the elements within the Reading strand by the end of the 2016-2017 school year compared to the state’s 78.9%.
• On average, Clayton’s students met or exceeded 52.7% of the elements within the Writing strand by the end of the 2016-2017 school year compared to the state’s 69%.
• On average, Clayton’s students met or exceeded 74.8% of the elements within the Speaking and Listening strand by the end of the 2016-2017 school year compared to the state’s 83.2%
• On average, Clayton’s students met or exceeded 63.3% of the elements within the Language strand by the end of the 2016-2017 school year compared to state’s 74.9%.
• Overall, Clayton’s students met or exceeded an average of 66.6% of all ELA elements by the end of the 2016-2017 school year compared to the state’s 76.6%.
• Six (6) elementary schools met or exceeded the state’s average of 76.6% of all ELA elements by the end of the 2016-2017 school year. They are: Arnold, Callaway, Lake Ridge, Pointe South, Riverdale, and Swint Elementary Schools.

Mathematics

• On average, Clayton’s students met or exceeded 83.5% of the elements within the Counting and Cardinality strand by the end of the 2016-2017 school year compared to the state’s 85.9%.

• On average, Clayton’s students met or 73.5% of the elements within the Operations and Algebraic Thinking strand by the end of the 2016-2017 school year compared to the state’s 76.5%.
• On average, Clayton’s students met or exceeded 71.0% of the elements within the Numbers and Operations in Base 10 strand by the end of the 2016-2017 school year compared to the state’s 72.7%.
• On average, Clayton’s students met or exceeded 83.1% of the elements within the Measurement and Data strand by the end of the 2016-2017 school year compared to the state’s 85.5%.
• On average, Clayton’s students met or exceeded 84.0% of the elements within the Geometry strand by the end of the 2016-2017 school year compared to the state’s 85.6%.
• Overall, Clayton’s students met or exceeded an average of 81.2% of all Mathematics elements by the end of the 2016-2017 school year compared to the state’s 83.3%.
• Eighteen (18) elementary schools met or exceeded the state’s average of 83.3% of all Mathematics elements by the end of the 2016-2017 school year. They are: Arnold, Brown, Callaway, East Clayton, Eddie White, Edmonds, Hawthorne, Haynie, Lake Ridge, Lee, McGarrah, Morrow, Mt. Zion Primary, Northcutt, Oliver, Pointe South, Riverdale, and Swint Elementary Schools.