The purpose of this quantitative study was to investigate whether there is a relationship between Tennessee's Voluntary Prekindergarten (VPK) program and kindergarten achievement. I compared the academic growth of who attended a VPK program to students in Title 1 schools who did not attend a VPK program. Kindergarten gives the first easyCBM assessment in the second semester of school. I compared the easyCBM scores of the students who attended a VPK program to the ones who did not attend a VPK program. This could reveal if attending the VPK program is related to the students’ academic growth and the amount of intervention a student will need the second semester of kindergarten. The upper-east Tennessee school system used in this study consisted of a high-quality prekindergarten program and high-quality schools. I examined a population of 628 kindergarten students. There were a total of 280 students who attended the VPK program and a total of 348 students who attended a Title 1 school and did not attend a VPK program. I was given permission from the school system to access the data. The easyCBM data was compiled by the performance excellence administrator and the director of early childhood of the school system. The data consisted of 3 consecutive years of data. The VPK students performed significantly better on the December easyCBM letter sounds, phoneme-segmenting, and math common core state standards screener scores. There was no significant difference in the December easyCBM word reading frequency screener scores. The VPK students performed significantly better on the May easyCBM letter sounds screener scores. There was no significant difference in the May easyCBM phoneme-segmenting and word reading frequency screener scores. The VPK students made significant gains from the December easyCBM scores to the May easyCBM scores. There was not a significant difference in the gain scores of the VPK students and the Title 1 students who did not attend a VPK program.

This researcher aimed to determine how data collected from computer-based assessment programs, specifically EasyCBM and AIMSweb, was used in data-driven instruction and used to identify risk levels in math and reading areas proficiency. Data from intervention programs were collected from six participating high schools. The data collection included math and reading universal screening scores and levels of risk indicators from Tier 2 and Tier 3 levels of their response to intervention (RTI) programs. Section A included math data within a baseline score and a risk indicator level. Section B had reading scores with a baseline score and a risk indicator level. A descriptive quantitative study was conducted to determine if significant differences in EasyCBM and AIMSweb exist in student universal screener scores over an academic calendar year. Independent variables included: math and reading universal screener scores, tier level identifiers, and level of risk indicators. Factors that influenced the rates of effectiveness included: interventionist utilization of data, student entry tier levels, and time spent in intervention from the fall to winter benchmarking period.