To require, beginning with the 2012-13 school year, the use of a kindergarten assessment process for students in state-funded full-day kindergarten classrooms. The process is to , identify the skills, knowledge, and characteristics of kindergarten students at the beginning of the school year in order to determine kindergarten readiness and inform instruction to meet the needs of individual students. (Companion: SB 5427).   Official Text and Analysis.

Adds provisions that parents and guardians may excuse their students from participating in the assessment. The assessment is named the Washington Kindergarten Inventory of Developing Skills. The purposes of this assessment are spelled out: to support social-emotional, physical, and cognitive growth and development; to support early learning provider and parent involvement; and to inform instruction. There must be a fairness and bias review of the assessment before it is implemented.

Adds a null and void clause making the act subject to appropriated funding.

To require school districts receiving all-day kindergarten support to agree to utilize a kindergarten assessment specified by the Superintendent of Public Instruction. Allows parents and guardians to excuse their students from participating in the assessment.