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.
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.
