Kindergarten readiness is an important and early predictor of high school graduation. Recognizing the effectiveness and importance of the first five years of life, there have been recent efforts to strengthen early childhood programs in Washington state and the region.
Readiness for incoming kindergarteners in Washington is assessed by teachers who observe students across six areas of development and learning: social emotional, physical, language, cognitive, literacy and math. Data are available through the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) data portal. For this measure, students are defined as kindergarten ready if they demonstrate readiness in all six areas.
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Kindergarten Readiness Map
Percent of students demonstrating readiness in 6 of 6 domains*
Source(s): Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, Report Card WaKids 2022-23 School Year, Washington Kindergarten Inventory of Developing Skills; U.S. Census Bureau, Geography Division 2020 TIGER/Line Shapefiles
*Social-Emotional, Physical, Language, Cognitive, Literacy, and Math
Insights & Analysis
- King County has the highest share of students who are kindergarten ready (59%), followed by Kitsap (52%), Pierce (47%), and Snohomish (46%).
- Of the 37,800 kindergarten students in the four-county region, almost half of them are in King County (49%), one-quarter are in Pierce (25%), one-fifth are in Snohomish (20%), and the remaining are in Kitsap (6%).
- Snoqualmie Valley School District (King County) has the highest share of students ready for kindergarten (81%).
- Six school districts straddle two counties:
- Three are entirely in the PSRC region: Auburn (King/Pierce), Fife (King/Pierce), and Northshore (King/Snohomish).
- Three extend outside the region: Darrington (Skagit/Snohomish), Eatonville (Lewis/Pierce), and Stanwood-Camano (Island/Snohomish).
- Index (Snohomish County) and Skykomish (King County) school districts are the only two with suppressed data because of small sample sizes.
Source(s): Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, Report Card WaKids 2022-23 School Year, Washington Kindergarten Inventory of Developing Skills
*Social-Emotional, Physical, Language, Cognitive, Literacy, and Math
Note 1: The two age-related equity focus groups (households with youth under 18 years old and households with older adults above 65 years old) are not included in this analysis because kindergarten readiness is an assessment of students in the first two months of kindergarten.
Insights & Analysis
- The share of kindergarten ready students from households with lower income in the region is 43%, 23 percentage points lower than other households.
- The share of kindergarten ready students in the region for those with a disability is 138% lower than those without.
- In 2023, fewer students of color were kindergarten ready than white non-Hispanic students, a difference of nine percentage points.
- The smallest percentage point difference in kindergarten readiness between students of color and white non-Hispanic students is in Kitsap County (8%), while the largest difference is in King County (12%); Pierce (11%) and Snohomish (9%) fall in the middle.
- For students in households with lower income, kindergarten readiness is lowest in Snohomish County (39%), followed by Kitsap and Pierce (44%), and King (45%).
- The largest percentage point difference in kindergarten readiness between students with a disability and those without is in King County (40%), while the smallest difference is in Kitsap and Snohomish counties (31%).
Source(s): Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, Report Card WaKids 2010-23 School Year, Washington Kindergarten Inventory of Developing Skills
*Social-Emotional, Physical, Language, Cognitive, Literacy, and Math
Note 1: Limited data available for students in Kitsap and Snohomish counties.
Note 2: The two age-related equity focus groups (households with youth under 18 years old and households with older adults above 65 years old) are not included in this analysis because kindergarten readiness is an assessment of students in the first two months of kindergarten.
Note 3: No data available for school year 2020-21.
Insights & Analysis
- The share of students prepared for kindergarten decreased over the past decade for all groups in Pierce County and increased for all groups in King County.
- Students of color in the region are less likely to be prepared for kindergarten compared to white non-Hispanic students, a gap of nine percentage points and a decrease of over half (57%) over the past decade.
- The gap in kindergarten readiness in the region between students from households with lower income and those from other households has remained relatively consistent in the last decade, decreasing from 27 percentage points to 23 percentage points in 2023.
- In King County, the difference in kindergarten readiness between students with a disability and those without more than doubled between 2011 and 2023 (+111%), while the difference remained similar in Pierce County - increasing slightly (+3%). Snohomish and Kitsap counties didn’t report data for students with disabilities until 2012 and 2015, respectively. Over the past 11 years, the difference decreased very slightly in Snohomish County (-3%) and over the past 8 years, the difference increased very slightly in Kitsap County (3%).