Frequently Asked Questions: Early Education Student

1. What is the purpose of Early Education Student?

Provide a mechanism to identify children participating in Early Childhood Family Education and School Readiness to better understand experiences prior to kindergarten across multiple public funding streams. This work will increase opportunities to better understand transition strategies between early learning programs and elementary school.

2. Why now?

The Dayton administration is vested in better understanding children’s experiences prior to kindergarten. Currently procedures are in place for Early Childhood Screening, Early Intervention and Early Childhood Special Education to understand the experiences of young children prior to kindergarten. Extending similar procedures to ECFE/SR is the next step in understanding patterns and pathways prior to kindergarten. Federal grants secured from the Statewide Longitudinal Data System and the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge Fund competitions are supporting the implementation of Early Education Student in line with Governor Dayton’s Seven Point Plan.

3. Why is parent name is requested?

Unlike K-12, early childhood crosses multiple departments, including the Minnesota Departments of Education and Human Services. The Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge Fund included a section on developing a de-identified environment where researchers could better understand the crossover between programs (for example, Child Care Assistance and School Readiness) and children’s experiences prior to kindergarten entry. Before this environment can be established, the data will need to be linked between departments and then de-identified. The absolute minimum number of staff required to do the linking will be used and all data privacy requirements will be maintained throughout the process. A parent’s name could be used to confirm a match. Individual names will never be made public per federal requirements.

The lessons learned from the de-identified analysis environment will help strengthen the early childhood policies at the local, state and national level. See the User Manual for more information.

5. If a child registers for a program but does not attend, are we to report that child?

6. If one child attends two different classes with the two different parents, how do we record that information?

7. What is to be marked if the family pays the full amount due based on a sliding fee scale? Is it “Full fee” or “partial fee”?