On average, Austin Independent School District prekindergarten students scored below the national average range on a test for receptive vocabulary ability in Fall 2012. English language learner students (ELLs) scored lower, on average, than did non-ELLs.

Although pre-K students' average gains on the 2010-2011 Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT in English, TVIP in Spanish) significantly differed by vertical team, these differences were attributed more to the students' school or classroom rather than to the vertical team in which a school resided. [For "Prekindergarten Evaluation Series,…

Although more than a third of tested pre-K students (37%) entered AISD one standard deviation below the national average in receptive vocabulary, the AISD pre-K program accelerated these students' growth by nearly twice the national average by the end of the 2010-2011 school year.

Full-day pre-K students from the 2001-2002 cohort were more likely to pass the 2010 7th-grade reading TAKS than were kindergarten students from the 2002-2003 cohort who were assumed eligible for pre-K but did not attend pre-K in 2001-2002. There is a full report and a separate executive summary report. [For the executive summary of this study, see…

This is the full report, and a separate research brief also was published. Austin Independent School District (AISD) served 5,450 pre-K students in 2009-2010. Approximately 70% of sampled English-speaking pre-K students and 74% of sampled Spanish-speaking pre-K students had faster than the expected growth rate on an assessment of receptive…