KidCode · Assessment
Before and after each unit
Every unit has a pre-test and a post-test I wrote from the curriculum. The two forms cover the same skills in the same format, with different code.
What changed
There are 13 pairs of assessments across the three years: 4 in 2024, 5 in 2025 and 4 in 2026. Students take them on paper, in about 45 minutes, without a computer. They ask students to predict what a program prints, name an error, or fix or write short code.
Of the 104 students who took both a pre- and a post-assessment, the average score went from 41.7% to 58.8%, a gain of 17.1 percentage points (a 41.0% relative increase). 99 students improved, 4 stayed the same and 1 went down.
41.7% → 58.8%average score, before and after
99 of 104students improved
| Group | Students | Before | After | Change (pp) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Everyone | 104 | 41.7% | 58.8% | +17.1 |
| Change | Students |
|---|---|
| went down | 1 |
| no change | 4 |
| 0 to 10 | 14 |
| 10 to 20 | 42 |
| 20 to 30 | 28 |
| 30 or more | 15 |
The forms
All 13 pairs
Blank copies of every pre- and post-assessment.
| Year | Unit | Where in the curriculum | Questions | Forms (PDF) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Python Basics & Strings | Weeks 1–2 (Days 1–10) | 13 | Pre · Post |
| 2024 | Decisions, Debugging & Loops | Weeks 3–4 (Days 11–20) | 15 | Pre · Post |
| 2024 | Lists, Tuples & Dictionaries | Weeks 5–6 (Days 21–30) | 13 | Pre · Post |
| 2024 | Functions & the Haunted School | Weeks 7–8 (Days 31–40) | 11 | Pre · Post |
| 2025 | Functions & List Power Tools | Week 1 (Days 1–5) | 10 | Pre · Post |
| 2025 | Secret Codes & Files | Week 2 (Days 6–10) | 9 | Pre · Post |
| 2025 | Errors & Data Formats | Week 3 (Days 11–15) | 8 | Pre · Post |
| 2025 | Objects, Classes & Inheritance | Weeks 4–5 (Days 16–25) | 8 | Pre · Post |
| 2025 | Libraries, Modules & Text as Data | Weeks 6–8 (Days 26–40) | 11 | Pre · Post |
| 2026 | Libraries, spaCy & Tokens | Weeks 1–2 (Days 1–10) | 11 | Pre · Post |
| 2026 | Sentences, Grammar & the Pipeline | Weeks 3–4 (Days 11–20) | 12 | Pre · Post |
| 2026 | Named Entities & Responsible NLP | Week 5 + Days 33–34 | 9 | Pre · Post |
| 2026 | Rules, Custom Entities & Chatbots | Weeks 6–8 (Days 26–40) | 8 | Pre · Post |
Notes & context
- The results show how scores changed between the pre- and post-assessment. There was no comparison group, so they don't measure what caused the change.
- Each student has one before and one after percentage. I don't have the unit-by-unit scores, so results can't be broken down by unit.
- 104 of the 124 students took both assessments.
- The relative increase is the change divided by the starting average. The 95% interval for the average gain is 15.3 to 18.9 percentage points.