The Pathways to Kindergarten report shows the publicly-funded early childhood programs children participated in before entering kindergarten.
Research shows that early learning programs help prepare children for learning in kindergarten. The report provides a visual representation of the different early childhood pathways children can take, and the number of children who followed each pathway.
The report uses a type of chart called a Sankey diagram. The chart is read from left to right, and shows the program(s) children participated in, in chronological order, before beginning kindergarten. Wider color bands represent larger numbers of children.
Hover over an individual pathway or color block to see the program(s) and the total number of children who followed that particular pathway.
The report includes only children who enrolled in Kindergarten for the selected school year.
The report is updated in late spring. See the Recently Posted Reports page for when the report was last updated.
Use the Location and Report Settings to select a location, school year and program. Data can also be filtered by race/ethnicity.
See the MI School Data Quick Start Guide for the basics of navigating the site and customizing a report.
Location Options
These options can be customized in the Location and Report Settings.
Location options: Statewide, ISD, District and School
Logged-in Users
Users with secure access who are logged in can see unsuppressed numbers for the entities for which they have been specifically authorized.
The Center for Educational Performance and Information collects the data used to compile this report from public schools and intermediate school districts via the Michigan Student Data System. For more information on the MSDS application and reporting rules, please see the MSDS Collection Details Manual on the CEPI website.
Schools are only required to report the following early childhood programs: Early On, Early Childhood Special Education, Great Start Readiness Program and GSRP/Head Start Blend. Therefore, the counts in this report are not inclusive of all early childhood services, and only include data for those publicly-funded programs.
When viewing by race/ethnicity, you may see gaps and breaks in the trend view. This is because federal definitions and categories have changed over the years. More information about race and ethnicity categories can be found in the MSDS Collection Details Manual.
Please note the following about the timing of enrollment in various programs:
- Programs may span more or less than one full school year.
- Enrollment from one program into another may not occur immediately; there may be gaps in time between programs.
- Although programs are shown in consecutive order, enrollment may overlap. For example, a child may be enrolled in GSRP and Early Childhood Special Education at the same time. In that instance, the program the child enrolled in first is listed first.
If you have questions not addressed here or in the linked resources, please contact CEPI customer support at cepi@michigan.gov.
Disclosure Avoidance
To protect the privacy of individual students, CEPI applies data suppression rules to sensitive data when report settings would yield fewer than 10 students in a given group. Complementary groups may also be suppressed. In some cases, values less than 10 may be shown when there is no risk of identifying individual students. Secure users can log in to view unsuppressed data for their authorized location. Please see How CEPI Protects Education Data for more information.
Report Labels
See the glossary for additional terms and acronyms used on MI School Data.
