Wortham: Chapter 2
Assessing young children
• Why are infants and Preschoolers
measured differently than older children
and adults?
• How does the demand for accountability
as espoused in NRS (National Reporting
System) conflict with current research on
assessment? (Appropriateness)
Principles of Assessment
• Assessment should use multiple sources of
information-”use of a variety of measures of
learning ensures an accurate view of the child’s
accomplishments” (Greenspan et al 1996,
Wiggins, 1993)
• Assessment should BENEFIT the child and
improve learning-according to Wiggins cited in
Wortham (2008, p31), whatever assessment
strategies are used, the information should be
used to guide the child and enhance learning.
Principles cont…
• Assessment should involve the child and
family-a parent’s knowledge about the
child is essential for true understanding of
the child’s developmental characteristics.
• Assessment should be fair for all children
(sources of unfairness, language, culture,
disabilities)
National Education Goals Panel
1998
• Assessment should bring benefits for children-(there
must be clear benefit)
• Assessment should be purposeful, reliable, valid and fair.
• Recognize that reliability and validity increase with
children’s age
• Assessment should be age appropriate in content and
methods of data collection
• Assessment should be linguistically appropriate (in some
ways assessment is are measures of language!)
• Parents should be valued sources of information
Assessing infants and Young
children
• Both informal and formal measures are used
• Formal measures have proven measures of
evaluation (standardized Tests), e.g.
– Apgar scale
• In standardized testing, test tasks are presented
under standard conditions so that the student’s
scores can be contrasted to the performance of
a norm group (the students level of functioning is
described in relation to typical or average
performance) – example of standard room!!!
Requirements for standardized
testing
• Follow standard procedures (preparation
for testing, environment, student
• The child’s best efforts must be enlisted
(maintain rapport)
• Responses must be correctly scored
(Terman and Merrill, cited in McLoughlin &
Lewis, 2008, p.75)
(Follow guidelines in the manual)—No
paraphrasing.
The process of Assessment
• Pre-assessment: prior to planning the curriculum
• Ongoing Assessment: Done throughout the year
and documented (formative/ summative
• Assessment at the end of reporting periods:
Summary progress reporting periods
• Assessment at the end of the year: Most
complete, may use standardized achievement
tests, teacher designed assessments, written
narratives, etc
The Standards
• How do we focus on appropriate learning
and assessment of young children and yet
address standards?
• The purpose of standards : to provide
clarity for the curriculum content, to raise
expectations for student learning, and to
ensure accountability as required by
NCLB
Standardized Tests
• Note that the educational system in the US has included
a strong standardized test tradition.
• Standardized tests allow large numbers of students to
respond to the same or similar sets of exercises under
approximately the same conditions of test administration,
scoring procedures, and test score interpretation.
• Standardized tests enable us to compare examinees
across students, classrooms, and countries.
• There are norm referenced and Criterion-referenced
tests.
Limitations and Inadequacies of
Standardized Tests
• Technical and educational Inadequacy (fail
the APA, AERA & NCME standards)
• Overuse and Misuse
• Unsuitable for the population
• Undue influence on education
Types of Standardized tests
• Achievement tests (California
Achievement test etc.)
• Standardized aptitude tests (IQ tests,
WISC-R, MSCA, Stanford-Binet)
• Screening and diagnostic tests
(identification and placement
Types of Standardized tests Standardized
testing in early childhood classrooms today
• For policy decisions (accountability)
• For screening and diagnosis of potential
problems
• Teacher Role
– May choose a test, administer, prepare
children, may score the test
Terminology
• Raw score - the number of items
answered correctly.
• Mean – Average
• Range – The spread of the scores (top# bottom#)
• Standard Deviation – Measure the
distance scores depart from the mean
(helps us quantify the spread of the
distribution)
Standardization and Norms
• Standardized tests eliminate bias (supposedly).
• Principles to follow:
– Match the test to the question you want to answer,
Use standardized measures according to the
designed purpose, choose tests that are valid and
reliable, you must follow the directions of
standardized tests exactly, be sure to understand
what the test reports and the statistics generated, use
multiple assessment methods to evaluate children
and programs.
Standardized/Norm-referenced Test
• A task or a set of tasks given under prescribed
conditions and designed to assess some aspect of a
person’s knowledge, skill, or personality.
• In designing a standardized test- rationale, what is to be
measured, who will be measured, how the results will be
used.
• Remember to ascertain that the test was developed to
children who are similar to your children (population v
sample)
• Norming is the process of finding out what score most
children of a given age will earn …
Reliability
• Reliability refers to consistency, dependability, or
stability. If a test can generalize to different
times, it has test-retest reliability. If a test can
generalize to other testers, it has interscorer
reliability.
Validity
• Validity refers to the extent to which a test
measures what it is supposed to measure what it
is supposed to measure.(face validity, content
validity etc.