Today’s educational climate of standards and accountability extends even to preschool programs (Bowman, Donovan, and Burns, 2001). The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) mandates assessment and accountability at all levels of public school, even in early childhood––defined as birth through age 8 (NAEYC, 1987). Additionally, the current preschool initiative Good Start, Grow Smart requires a demonstration of positive child outcomes and ongoing assessment efforts. The initiative dramatically affects accountability measures for Head Start (Horn, 2003).
In light of this background, it is critical to understand how both formal and informal assessments, when developmentally appropriate in design and purpose, are beneficial for early childhood. This age period is often broken into three groups for discussion: infants/toddlers (ages 0 through 2), preschoolers (ages 3
through 5), and primary children (kindergarten through grade 3).
The Challenge of Early Childhood Assessment
The assessment of young children is very different from the assessment of older children and adults in several ways. The greatest difference is in the way young children learn. They construct knowledge in experiential, interactive, concrete, and hands-on ways (Bredekamp and Rosegrant, 1992, 1995) rather than through abstract reasoning and paper and pencil activities alone. To learn, young children must touch and manipulate objects, build and create in many media, listen and act out stories and everyday roles, talk and sing, and move and play in various ways and environments. Consequently, the expression of what young children know and can do would best be served in ways other than traditional paper and pencil assessments.
Assessment is also challenging during early childhood because a child’s development is rapid, uneven, episodic, and highly influenced by the environment (Shepard, Kagan, and Wurtz, 1998). A developing child exhibits periods of both rapid growth and frequent rest. Children develop in four domains–– physical, cognitive, social, and emotional––and not at the same pace through each. No two children are the same; each child has a unique rate of development. In addition, no two children have the same family, cultural, and experiential backgrounds. Clearly, these variables mean that a “one-size-fits-all” assessment will not meet
the needs of most young children (Shepard, et al.).
Another assessment challenge for young children is that it takes time to administer assessments properly. Assessments primarily should be administered in a one-on-one setting to each child by his or her teacher. In addition, a child’s attention span is often very short and the assessment should therefore be administered in short segments over a period of a few days or even weeks. While early childhood educators demand developmentally appropriate assessments for children, they often complain about the time it takes to administer them and the resulting loss of instructional time in the classroom. However, when quality tests mirror quality instruction, assessment and teaching become almost seamless, complementing and informing one another (Neuman, Copple, and Bredekamp, 2000).
NAEYC Position Statement Early Childhood Curriculum, Assessment, and Program Evaluation
