Welcome Back from VKRP!

The 2020-2021 school year will be like no other. Divisions have had to grapple with difficult decisions and are starting the year with a mix of in-person, online, and hybrid approaches to instruction.

One aspect of the new school year will remain the same – teachers will strive to meet students where they are academically and emotionally, in order to provide instruction and support students’ social-emotional well-being to build foundational skills for school success. It is critical that teachers assess and understand students’ social-emotional well-being and academic skills, in order to provide equitable access to high-quality instruction and support.

Highlighted below are important changes to the Fall VKRP assessment term and links to resources where you can find additional information.

Assessment Planning and Scheduling

Conducting assessments this fall will take some planning and creativity – and no one does that better than educators! As in previous assessment terms, you will continue to complete the Child Behavior Rating Scale (CBRS) through the online web portal after 4-6 weeks of virtual or in-person instruction. The Early Mathematics Assessment System (EMAS) will need to be administered in person.

Numerous divisions have shared with us their successes in scheduling appointments for in-person EMAS assessments. In these divisions, assessment appointments are timed to allow for cleaning/sanitizing of materials and classrooms in between visits and foot traffic patterns are one-directional with families entering one door and exiting another. Family members are encouraged to wait in a separate seating area outside the classroom while the teacher works with the student.

Updated Program Manual

We have updated the Program Manual to highlight important changes and additions for the Fall 2020 assessment term. Teachers and other assessors will need to download the Fall 2020 VKRP Program Manual version 2 from the VKRP web portal.  The manual is shared electronically this year due to the necessity to provide timely updates as guidance evolves. The VKRP Team will alert VKRP Division Contacts and VKRP Trainers if and when a new version of the manual is uploaded to the web portal.

We have included guidance for safely conducting the EMAS math assessment using CDC guidelines (pp. 10-14). The CBRS section of the manual (pp. 17-23) includes information on newly added items designed to capture student well-being. For divisions that are 100% virtual, teachers should do their best to observe students’ behavior within the online context.

Updated Reports and Resources

In response to teacher feedback, we have created Classroom Summary Math Subdomain Reports with all students’ scores at the skill and item level. Data can be sorted in multiple ways to help teachers understand patterns in students’ skills.

Finally, we have launched our updated public website — vkrponline.org. The team incorporated feedback gathered from teachers and other stakeholders to make upgrades and additions. We hope that you’ll find the readiness resources and family pages useful as these are features specifically requested by school staff. In addition to activities and linked resources, families with internet access can now download the Fall and Spring Family Resources Packet directly on the public website. We hope you’ll visit these pages and share them with your students’ families.

We wish you a safe, healthy, and fulfilling start to the school year.