Early Childhood Assessment

Assessments in Early Childhood (Section 1) There are five important considerations when assessing students to determine learning progress, developmental progress, and in detecting potential delays or disabilities. The first consideration is the importance of getting to know the child, the family, their background, gather developmental information, and conduct home visits to learn about the family culture. Understanding the family dynamics will help in assessing the child’s behavior more accurately. The second consideration is that young children can be heavily and easily influenced by slight or moderate changes with themselves or in their environments. Being flexible in the type of assessment used, along with timing, will be key in data accuracy.

The fourth consideration is to research, plan, and match the type of assessment to what you are assessing in the child. Taking multiple assessments, or using too many different tools, could result in less accurate data. The fifth consideration focuses on the tool used, professional development, and the quality of the information that was gathered during the assessment. The assessment should focus on benefitting the child, family, and the programs. Two types of informal assessments typically used in early childhood are naturalistic observation and anecdotal records, with both focusing on observing in a child’s natural settings. Naturalistic observation would consist of watching a child in their natural environment, a home or classroom, to make decisions about how to meet their needs. Anecdotal records, or ABC recording, are narrative records of events that happen before, during, and after specific behaviors or at different times during the

Criterion-referenced assessments measure the performance of a child against a set of predetermined criteria. Although these assessments can be standard when looking at specific skills, there is flexibility in how they are administered and the materials being used when looking at developmental progress. Curriculum-referenced assessments are instruments that are aligned with a specific set of curriculum goals. This placed children in a learning sequence, allows the teacher to monitor student progress, and provides a teaching sequence for teachers to follow. When determining the type of assessment or tool to use with students, there are three important things to consider, reliability, validity, and technical