Introduction

The EDI is an assessment filled out on all the children in kindergarten that was developed by the Offord Centre for Child Studies at McMaster University in Canada. First 5 Orange County, which invests in building an early childhood system of care to ensure that all children in Orange County reach their full potential, is leading this effort in partnership with the UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities.

The EDI is a questionnaire completed by kindergarten teachers for each child in their class in the second half of the school year. It includes five key developmental areas and 16 sub-areas, and is used to produce holistic, community-level measures of childhood development during the kindergarten year. The EDI is not designed to screen, identify, or diagnose individual children. For detailed background about the EDI, including research and validity studies, click here.

The EDI can be used to monitor populations of children over time, report on populations of children in different communities, predict how groups of children will do in elementary school, and inform policies concerning young children and their families.

As a population-level measure, the EDI data presents a snapshot of where children are most on track (developmental area) or ready (developmental sub-area).

First 5 Orange County is proud of the comprehensive kindergarten readiness data provided through the EDI. At the same time, we know that data provide a snapshot of how children are doing, and that children and families are more complex than a single data point or even a set of data. In our effort to embrace diversity and inclusion as strengths, we are committed to using our EDI data to identify disparities in outcomes for young children and are careful to present data in a way that does not create or perpetuate disparities. As we share the EDI data with our communities, we are working to promote diversity, address inequities in children’s health, development, and early learning, and to incorporate the voices of the families we serve as we use the EDI to create practice and policy change.

To request EDI data, or an EDI data briefing, click here to submit a request form. 

EDI Domains and Subdomains

The EDI includes five key developmental areas (or domains) and 16 sub-areas, and is used to produce holistic, community-level measures of childhood development during the kindergarten year. The domains look at children who are on track (25th-100th percentile), at-risk (10-25th percentile), or not on track (0-10th percentile).

The five domains are:

• – Physical Health
• – Social Competence
• – Emotional Maturity
• – Language & Cognitive Development
• – Communication Skills & General Knowledge

For more information about each developmental domain and how the EDI data is making an impact, click here.

To access the resource in Spanish, click here.  

Additional Resources