Learning Outcomes
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Explain need and purpose of assessment
Describe characteristics of norm-referenced,
criterion-referenced, and curriculum-based
assessments
• Describe limitations to traditional and formal
assessments for young children
• Describe advantages of alternative
assessments for young children
* Key concepts for Exam III
HD FS 340
Assessment & Program Planning
November 5, 2002
Susan Hegland, Ph. D.
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Why assess?
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Screening
• Assessment is the process of
• To identify children who may be at risk for health
or developmental problems
• To determine whether child’s performance is
sufficiently different from others to warrant indepth diagnostic assessment
• Occurs prior to other measurement processes
• Brief and easy to administer
– observing,
– gathering
– recording information
• Purpose: to make evaluative decisions
– Screening
– Diagnostic assessment
– Program assessment
– Program evaluation
– Facilitates administration to large groups
• Norm-referenced
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Diagnostic assessment
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Program assessment
• Purpose
• To determine child’s current skill level
• Guides program planning and
implementation
• Document children’s progress over time
• Criterion-referenced or curriculum-based
assessment
– To determine whether a problem exists
– To identify the nature of the problem
– To conclude whether child is eligible for services
under IDEA
• Highly specialized and in-depth
– Administered by trained professionals (e.g., Master’s
level school psychologists)
• Used for referral and placement decisions
• Norm-referenced
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Program evaluation
Formal assessments
• Program evaluation (accountability):
• Predefined, highly structured tasks
– Input
• Resources (dollars & staff time put in to program)
– Specified guidelines for administration
– Output
• Focus on isolated aspects of development
• Quantity & quality of services provided to clients
– Outcomes (Results)
– Easy to observe
– Easy to measure
• Changes in clients (e.g., children, parents) as a result of services
received
• Required by most funding sources of educational and
human services
• Child Outcome Evaluation
• Norm-referenced
– based on a standardization sample
– To determine how children progress over time by comparing
child’s skills before and after intervention
– Criterion-referenced or curriculum-based assessments
• Includes standardized tests (e.g., ACT,
ITBS, Bayley )
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Norm-referenced Assessment
Criterion-referenced assessment
• Provides information on how a child is
developing in relation to a larger group of
children of the same chronological age
• Items chosen according to strict criteria:
– Percentage of children who master skill at certain age
– Does passing item predict getting a high score?
– Does failing item predict a low score?
• Test must have
– reliability (stable)
• High test-retest agreement
• High agreement among items
– validity (accurate) for the
• Measures mastery of specific objectives defined
by predetermined standards of criteria
• Items usually sequentially arranged within the
developmental domains or subject areas
• Numerical scores represent proportion of
specific domain or subject area that a child has
mastered
• Typically: isolated items chosen from normreferenced tests (e.g., Brigance, Denver)
• Purpose intended
• Population (e.g., Spanish-speaking?)
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Limits to traditional assessments
Curriculum-based assessments
• Form of criterion-referenced assessments
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– Program objectives guide item selection
• Curriculum-referenced assessments
– California Desired Results Developmental Profile
• Curriculum-embedded assessments
Underestimate young children’s skills
Lack relation to program goals
Do not permit adaptation to context or culture
Do not take into account child’s response to
instruction
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– AEPS (Assessment, Evaluation, & Programming
System)
– Creative Curriculum Developmental Continuum
– High Scope Child Observation Record (COR)
• Portfolio assessments
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Child points to milk
Adult: what do you want?
Child: no response
Adult: do you want milk or bread?
Child: “mihl”
Adult: “You want milk?
Child: “Milk!”
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Advantages of alternative
assessments
HD FS 340 & assessments
• Screening assessments
• Curriculum based Assessments
• Focus on whole child
• Focus on natural context
• Monitor response to instruction
(scaffolding)
• Linked to curriculum
– Naturalistic assessments
– Focused assessments
– Dynamic assessments
– Curriculum-based language assessments
– Transdisciplinary models
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Intervention/Teaching/Curriculum Strategies
Why curriculum-based
assessments?
1. Structuring physical space &
materials
2. Using children’s preferences for
materials & activities
3. Structuring social aspects of
environment
4. Structuring routines
5. Using structured social activities
6. Using different reinforcement
strategies
• High adult 7. Using response-prompting
control
strategies
• Low adult
control
Your professional role: For each child you
work with, decide when to
• watch child “construct”, develop, acquire
skill/knowledge
• “teach” or “intervene” to help child acquire
skill
• Which skills?
• When?
• How powerful adult strategy to use?
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When to use high adult control to
intervene to develop child’s skill?
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Think of a child…
For whom the following tasks are
– individually appropriate
– require low adult power:
• When probability of child initiating skill on
own is LOW
• When probability of adult control strategy
producing specific child behavior is HIGH
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Uses words to get help from adults
Shows beginning of impulse regulation
Counts to two or three
Can be distracted from unsafe behavior with
verbal limits
• Learns and uses new vocabulary in everyday
experiences
Repeat for high adult power…
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Think of an infant/toddler you know with
“challenging” behaviors…
Level of Adult Power used to elicit behavior
High
Low
Probability of child-initiated behavior
Low
High
Model of assessment & intervention
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Use the California Desired Results Dev’tal Profile:
• Think of a skill that you DON’T need to facilitate,
– because the probability of the child initiating it on her/his own is
high…
– OR because the probability of anything you do producing it is
low…
• Now think of a skill that you DO need to facilitate,
– because the probability of the child initiating it on her/his own is
low…
– OR because the probability of anything you do producing it is
high…
• Share these with your learning team; choose one to
share with large group
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How can curriculum-based
assessment help you?
Identifies:
• what the child is currently initiating
• important target skills to work on
• what you can elicit with a variety of low to
high adult control strategies
• context in which intervention is likely to be
successful
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