Educational organizations in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors all need data to make evidence-based decisions. However, in many cases, the data they have access to is unreliable, not applicable, or difficult to understand. NORC provides these organizations with tools that provide unbiased, rigorously produced data that informs their work on early education, K-12, and higher education programs, policies, and practices.

Early childhood education systems have historically lacked a standard approach to measure early math, oral language, and literacy skills in pre-kindergarten classrooms. NORC partners with a variety of agencies and organizations to address that issue. For example, the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation and Welborn Baptist Foundation hired NORC and the University of Chicago to develop the Kindergarten Readiness Indicators (KRI), a brief assessment that measures early oral language, literacy, and numeracy skills for Pre-K children. Pre-K providers across the state of Indiana now use it to assess students in the On My Way pre-kindergarten funded programs. Through the Getting on Track Early for School Success project, NORC and the University of Chicago built a system that enables teachers to monitor how pre-kindergarten student’s progress on numerical and spatial reasoning skills and on oral language and literacy skills. Those skills make up the foundation for success in later learning in elementary school and beyond.