Susan Levine, Susan Goldin-Meadow, Stephen Raudenbush: Getting on Track Early for School Success: Scaling Up an Assessment-Instruction
System for Preschool Math, Oral Language & Literacy

The overarching goal of the Getting on Track Early for School Success project is to ensure that all children
are on track for academic success when they enter the K-12 education system at age 5. To this end, we
have developed a formative assessment and instructional system that helps preschool teachers
effectively and efficiently monitor their students’ progress on math, oral language, and literary skills,
which are fundamental to later academic achievement. We implemented a randomized control trial (RCT)
that showed that teachers’ use of the math system for one year positively influences student outcomes.
Specifically, we were able to close about one third of the achievement gap between minority, lower-SES
students and majority, higher-SES students. Our next step is to test the impact of the system in a scaledup
RCT that includes both the math and oral language and literacy (OLL) systems. This will bring us
closer to our long-term goal of distributing the system for wider use so that students’ outcomes are
improved on a broader scale. The purpose of the requested funding is to help us prepare for and support
such a trial by working with partners in anticipation of scale up, and piloting it in a new organization.

Susan Levine
Psychology

Susan Goldin-Meadow
Psychology

Stephen Raudenbush
Sociology, Committee on Education