Early Childhood Assessment Why, What, and How (2008) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
1 Introduction
1 Introduction
Pages 15-26
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From page 15... ...
Each of those goals encompasses wide variation: some parents value accomplishment in athletics highly, while others value music, and yet others value academics above all. Ethical commitments for some parents imply the adherence to a particular creed, and for others mean wrestling to develop one's own moral imperatives.
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From page 16... ...
One might conceptualize the policies as a map that provides a distorted representation of the underlying landscape, much as the Mercator projection of the earth greatly overestimates the areas of land masses at the poles. The "policy projection" of child development has often shrunk the size of social, emotional, and relational domains to focus on health and academics.
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From page 17... ...
Many early childhood educators prefer indirect forms of assessment, such as observation of the child in a natural environment or parent or caregiver reports, to direct assessment. Nonetheless, direct assessments are widely used and offer rich information about individual children and groups of children.
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From page 18... ...
It helps early childhood program staff determine how well they are meeting their objectives for the children they serve, and it informs program design and implementation. It provides some of the information needed for program accountability and contributes to advancing knowledge of child development.
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From page 19... ...
We argue in this volume, though, that thinking about accountability for early childhood programs requires an understanding of much more than just how well children score on tests. Interpreting outcome scores collected from children in an early childhood program requires the presence of a larger system, in the context of which particular assessments are selected, implemented, and interpreted.
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From page 20... ...
On the other hand, implementing assessment as a crucial, though neither simple nor inexpensive, part of a well-articulated early childhood care and education system offers the possibility of improved programs, better informed parents and care and education providers, happier and more accomplished children, and more solid evidence concerning program effectiveness. THE COMMITTEE'S CHARGE In the context described above, the U.S.
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From page 21... ...
This review will include consideration of the range of variation associated with developmental outcomes in different child populations according to gender, SES status, race/ethnicity, and age. Special attention will be given to outcomes that are specified as the focus of early childhood programming, such as Head Start, as well as outcomes that allow states to moni tor the developmental capacities of young children and to support programs that make positive contributions to these outcomes.
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From page 22... ...
The committee gathered information from a broad range of sources on a number of issues: • Appropriate purposes for assessing young children and uses for assessment results -- Defining appropriate uses and identifying user groups -- Identifying potential misuses of assessment results -- Using children's assessment results to make decisions about programs • Decisions to be made in assessing young children -- Choosing domains that should be assessed -- Selecting direct versus observational, in-context, or "authentic" assessment -- Deciding when to sample children or items (or both) versus administering all items to all children
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From page 23... ...
Committee members drew on their expertise and professional experience in child development, early childhood care and education, and assessment in reviewing and evaluating these materials. The ACF materials reviewed include • documents describing Head Start and Early Head Start programs, standards, frameworks, and research projects; • documents describing the NRS, as well as its development and implementation; and • web pages maintained by ACF organizations, including Head Start, the Office of Planning, Research and Evalua tion, the Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center, the National Head Start Association, and others.
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From page 24... ...
We were especially interested in materials on developmental outcomes, assessment methods, and instruments, including existing reviews of early childhood assessment instruments and material on children in special populations and with special needs. Previous NRC reports including From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development (National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2000)
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From page 25... ...
Part II concentrates on what should be assessed and why. Chapter 4 discusses screening assessments, particularly for infants and young toddlers; Chapter 5 focuses on the domains typically assessed in young children and approaches to assessing them; and Chapter 6 discusses methods for measuring the quality of early childhood environments.
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From page 26... ...
Appendix D provides sources for detailed information on assessment instruments. Appendix E contains brief biographical sketches of the committee members and staff.
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