Why are ‘Leading Indicator’ Data so Important?

Leading indicator data have the most measurable impact on a child’s learning outcomes. Collecting child development data before, or on entry, to kindergarten impacts educators in different ways.

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Families:

Understand their child’s progress through simple reporting from the beginning and at the end of the year.

Teachers are able to:

Organize their instruction entirely around their incoming class and plan for tiered instruction;
Monitor each child’s progress based on an original benchmark; and
Put interventions in place at the beginning of the school year to prevent further decline in learning.

Principals are able to:

Inform school development planning; and
Engage and inform multiple education stakeholders.

Superintendents can:

Allocate resources effectively thereby reducing unnecessary costs;
Put additional support in place for those children who need it;
Identify trends over time; and
Map the percentage of vulnerable children and relate it to the socio-economic status for the region.

Inefficiencies of Trailing Indicator Data

Data from provincial and state monitoring systems often provide ‘trailing indicators’, data recorded from previous years, to:

  • Show the distribution of educational outcomes across schools;
  • Examine long-term trends in child outcomes; and Assess the extent of inequalities in educational outcomes among ethnic and social class groups and between the sexes.

Trailing indicator data act as a useful measurement tool for situational analysis, but has limited impact on the learning outcomes of children who require immediate intervention.