Mississippi has introduced a revised kindergarten readiness assessment for 2025-26, aiming to align early learning benchmarks more closely with third-grade reading standards, with recent results highlighting ongoing challenges and improvements in early childhood education.
Mississippi has released its Kindergarten Readiness Assessment results for the 2025-26 school year, offering parents and teachers a fresh look at how children are entering the classroom. According to the Mississippi Department of Education, 37.07% of students scored as kindergarten-ready in the fall 2025 assessment, while 55.02% reached the end-of-year target in spring 2026. The department says the test is designed to show what young children know and can do at the start of school, and to help shape classroom support and early instruction.
The assessment is given to both kindergarten and pre-kindergarten pupils twice a year, in autumn and again in spring. MDE said the results also help measure how well pre-K programmes prepare 4-year-olds for kindergarten, including students in Early Learning Collaboratives, state-funded pre-K and other public pre-K settings. The department’s pre-K report says the test covers language and literacy, mathematics, science, social studies, physical development and social development.
Officials cautioned that this year’s figures cannot be compared directly with earlier results. WLOX reported that Mississippi introduced a new benchmark for the 2025-26 school year to align expectations more closely with the state’s third-grade reading standard. The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s data centre also notes that the revised cut scores are intended to place children on a path towards third-grade reading proficiency.
The results are published on MDE’s 2025-26 student assessment page, which gives families and educators access to reports from pre-K through high school. The department says the data are meant to help teachers adjust instruction and give parents a clearer picture of early learning progress at the start and end of the school year.
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