Early Childhood Screening

Data Definitions

Early Childhood Screening: A no-cost check that evaluates how a child is growing, moving, talking, seeing, hearing, and behaving. The screening aims to identify any potential health or developmental concerns early on, allowing families to access necessary resources and support.

Key Terminology

• CTSTR: Counts Too Small To Report - when results are less than 10
• No Data Available: No data is available for the selected criteria
• School County: County of the location of public school of enrollment
• School District: School district in the state of Minnesota
• School Year: Period of time that covers July 1 of one year through June 30 of the following

It is recommended that children be screened between the ages of 3 and 4 for optimal results, although screenings can occur anytime before kindergarten.

If a child was screened more than one time, only the first screening date is included.

With the ECLDS, Minnesota is effectively filling in prekindergarten knowledge gaps by linking data on early care and education participation to kindergarten records and by linking data from these early care and education programs to one another at the child level. In spite of this, gaps remain. Importantly:  

• ECLDS does not contain data on children who:
  • Participated in private-pay child care and preschool arrangements
  • Go on to attend private or parochial K-12 schools
  • Participated in programs for which data are not committed and integrated into the ECLDS
• ECLDS has limited information on children who:  
  • Were not born in Minnesota
  • Were born in Minnesota but leave
  • Have mobility between Minnesota and another state

Context matters. Whenever possible, users of ECLDS data should have an understanding of the local early childhood context in a given community when querying and using data for that area. Many early learning programs and interventions are undertaken at the local level. These local initiatives likely impact local results and can drive trends that are different from regional or state level trends.

Data is uploaded in the ECLDS twice annually. Programs may request complete reloads of their contributed data for a variety of reasons. ECLDS users should note that counts can and do change in the system. Therefore, users of ECLDS data products found at eclds.mn.gov are encouraged to use the following citation:  

[Chart Title], [Year] by [Geographic Level]. Minnesota Early Childhood Longitudinal Data System [Date Printed].