The staff of the Early Childhood Curriculum and Evaluation Project of the Mississippi State Department of Education developed the Kindergarten Inventory of Developing Social Competency (KIDSC) in 1986 as a means of evaluating the state's program goals in the area of self-concept. Positive results from field testing indicated the usefulness of the instrument. The KIDSC was administered as pretest and posttest evaluations in the 1986-87 and 1987-88 school years. Focus was on determining whether students who started kindergarten with an "at risk" view of themselves as learners changed to an "adequate" or "high" view of themselves as learners by the end of the school year. The sample included approximately 5,000 students in 20 school districts. While only 22.9% of the students scored in the "high" self-concept group at the pretest, 40.8% scored in this group on the posttest. The low self-concept group included 20.3% of the preschoolers in September, and only 11.9% in April. Results suggest that a large proportion of Mississippi students were entering grade 1 with strong positive feelings of self in relation to school tasks. Recommendations are made for ways of increasing the numbers of children graduating from kindergarten with positive self-concepts. (SLD)