Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

Assessing Kindergarten Children:

What School Systems Need to Know

Written for SERVE by

Catherine Scott-Little, Ph.D., SERVE

and

Judith Niemeyer, Ph.D., School of Education

Department of Specialized Education Services

University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

Associated with the School of Education,

University of North Carolina at Greensboro

First Edition, 2001

Edited by

Charles Ahearn, Director of Communications

and Publications, SERVE

Donna Nalley, Publications Project

Director, SERVE

Karen DeMeester, Senior Program

Specialist, SERVE

Christy Casbon, Assistant Program

Specialist, SERVE

Designed by

Jeremy McClellan, Graphic Designer, SERVE

The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or

policies of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S.

Department of Education, nor does mention of trade names, commercial

products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.

This document was produced with funding from the Office of Educational

Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, under contract

no. ED-01-CO-0015.
Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

Acknowledgments ....................................................................................... 2

Introduction................................................................................................. 3

The Need for Good Assessment Data

from Kindergartners.................................................................................... 6

Increasing Need for Assessment Data .......................................................................................................... 6

Complexities of Early Childhood Assessment ........................................................................................ 8

Growing Concerns about Assessment of Young Children .............................................................. 9

Designing Assessment Systems: Balancing the

Need for Information with Concern for Children .......................................... 10

Principles for Assessing Kindergarten Children

Assessment “Shoulds” ............................................................................................................................................... 11

Purpose of the Assessment ........................................................................................................................ 11

Age Appropriateness .................................................................................................................................... 13

Range of Indicators .......................................................................................................................................... 14

Naturalistic or Authentic Assessments ............................................................................................. 14

Culturally and Linguistically Sensitive Measures ....................................................................... 15

Accommodations for Children with Disabilities ........................................................................ 16

Multiple Sources and Types of Information ................................................................................... 18

Confidence in the Information: Reliability and Validity ........................................................ 18

Realistic Data Collection Processes ................................................................................................... 19

Assessment “Should Nots” .................................................................................................................................... 20

High-Stakes Decisions ................................................................................................................................... 21

Pencil-and-Paper Standardized Tests ................................................................................................ 22

Using an Instrument for a Purpose Other Than the

Purpose for Which It Was Designed ................................................................................................... 22

How Assessment Information Is Collected ................................................................................................ 23

Matching the Information Collection Method with

the Purpose for the Assessment .............................................................................................................. 25

Assessment Safeguards ........................................................................................................................................... 26

Legal and Ethical Issues Related to Assessment ......................................................................... 27

Sampling vs. Universal Data Collection ........................................................................................... 27

Information Management–Communicating the Results ........................................................ 28

Getting Down to “Brass Tacks:” Designing Kindergarten

Assessment Systems .................................................................................... 30

Designing Assessment Systems Step by Step ......................................................................................... 30

Planning Resources ..................................................................................... 34

Conclusions .................................................................................................. 35

Appendix A: Kindergarten Assessment Planning Guide .............................. 36

Appendix B: Assessment Resources ............................................................. 39

Sources Cited and Consulted ....................................................................... 40

About SERVE ............................................................................................... 41

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Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to the following individuals who provided information,

feedback, and support in the development of this publication:

Lynn Amwake, Early Childhood Program Specialist, SERVE

Glyn Brown, Early Childhood Program Specialist, SERVE

Katie Dufford-Melendez, Education Specialist, SERVE

Beth Garris, Director, Children, Families, and Communities, SERVE

Kelly Maxwell, Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center,

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Wendy McColskey, Director, Assessment, Accountability, and

Standards, SERVE

Nancy McMunn, Senior Program Specialist, SERVE

Vicky Mikow-Porto, Senior Policy Analyst, SERVE

John Pruette, Early Childhood Specialist, North Carolina Department of

Public Instruction

Lucy Roberts, Chief, Early Childhood, North Carolina Department of

Public Instruction

Jean Williams, Deputy Executive Director for Programs, SERVE

Lucy Wynn, Early Childhood Program Specialist, SERVE

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Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

Assessing Kindergarten Children:

What School Systems Need to Know

Introduction

Each fall schools across our country enroll thousands of young children

who are starting school for the first time. This transition is an important

juncture for families, schools, and communities. The children are excited

about “going to big school.” Parents have mixed feelings–proud of their

child’s growth and, at the same time, anxious about how their “little one”

will do in the new school environment. School educators prepare for a

new year, wondering what skills and abilities this new group of children

will bring to their classrooms. Funders and policymakers want to know

how well the community has done to prepare children for school.

High-quality assessments of children prior to and during kindergarten are essential for successful kindergarten programs. Parents,

teachers, administrators, and policymakers rely on assessment

information during the kindergarten year to

✒ Understand each child’s particular strengths and skills that

might need additional attention

✒ Identify children with suspected disabilities who require

additional evaluations

✒ Plan activities that match the skills and abilities of children

in their classrooms

✒ Understand the characteristics of cohorts of children in

their school

✒ Determine how successful early childhood and schoolbased programs have been in preparing children for kindergarten, and identify gaps in services within their community

Given the importance of these uses of assessment information, it is

critical that schools, districts, and state departments of education

carefully plan their assessment systems and select assessment

measures to ensure that the information collected during the assessment is as accurate and useful as possible. Unfortunately, assessment

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Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

of young children is extremely complex, and there is no one assessment measure that will meet all needs for assessment information

during kindergarten.

This resource book, Assessing Kindergarten Children: What

School Systems Need to Know, is designed to guide school

systems through a decision-making process to design an assessment

system that is best suited to their particular needs. The assessment

“system” will collect information from children through assessment

measures and perhaps other sources of data, such as health records or

demographic data. Persons involved in selecting assessment measures

and designing schoolwide assessment systems can use this book as a

planning guide–a tool to help them make decisions about assessments

based on “best practices” in early childhood assessment. Persons with

varying experiences–superintendents, principals, teachers, policymakers, higher education faculty, parents, and early childhood program

representatives–may be involved in designing statewide or

districtwide assessment systems and may find this book helpful.

The principles outlined in the guide are based upon recommendations from the National Education Goals Panel Early Childhood

Assessments Resource Group (1998) in the publication Principles

and Recommendations for Early Childhood Assessments,

numerous position statements on early childhood assessment

developed by various professional associations, our knowledge of

recent developments in early childhood research and theory, and the

authors’ own experiences working with school systems as they

develop assessment systems. This guide poses important questions

and issues to be addressed when planning for statewide or

districtwide kindergarten assessments that will be used as children

enter kindergarten or during the kindergarten year. It is a tool for

educators and policymakers–a process for selecting the best

possible kindergarten assessment strategies.

Please note that this guidebook provides a resource for state

departments and school districts planning wide-scale assessment

systems that will be implemented with cohorts of kindergarten

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Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

children. This includes mass screening of children for the purpose

of detecting children with suspected disabilities who may require

further evaluation. However, the guide does not address the individualized evaluation process that is needed for children when

screening results indicate a need for further evaluation. While many

of the same principles described apply to evaluation of children,

technical considerations for evaluation of individual children to

ascertain disabilities are beyond the scope of this guide, and the

instruments used are markedly different from those that would be

used to assess children on a large scale.

The appendices include resources that will be helpful for school

systems in the process of designing an assessment system. Appendix A is a planning guide for developing an assessment system–

steps that will be helpful and issues to be considered during the

planning process. Appendix B includes references for position

statements, websites, and publications that provide additional

information on assessment of young children.

A companion publication, entitled Assessing Kindergarten

Children: A Compendium of Assessment Instruments, provides useful information for many commercially available instruments. The Compendium, also available from SERVE, summarizes

basic information from over 50 early childhood assessment measures, such as the types of data they collect, their documented

reliability and validity, training required to administer the instruments,

and how they can be obtained. Taken together, the publications

provide easily accessible information that is essential for designing

assessment systems.

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Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

The Need for Good Assessment Data

from Kindergartners

Increasing Need for

Assessment Data

Assessment information can be the basis for improvements in

learning and has become a “hot topic” among educators across

the country. Several initiatives have contributed to the increased

need for assessment data from kindergarten children, including

the following:

✒ The National Education Goals Panel’s first educational goal

that “By the year 2000, all children in America will start

school ready to learn”

✒ Increasing emphasis on documented results or outcomes for

preschool, Head Start, and other early childhood programs

✒ The emphasis on school accountability and the need to

demonstrate improvements in student achievement in

earlier grades

A recent survey by SERVE and the National Center for Early Development and Learning (NCEDL) found that kindergarten children are

being assessed in almost every state in the country (Saluja, ScottLittle, & Clifford, 2000). The purposes of these assessments vary.

While all states have screening systems in place to meet the IDEA

requirement for identifying children with suspected disabilities,

schools in a large number of states are implementing additional

assessments to provide information on children’s “readiness” for

school. About half the states in the nation reported that they have

statewide “readiness” assessment systems, some specifying how

children should be assessed and some requiring districts to select

assessment strategies within parameters established by the state.

Districts in the majority of the remaining states were free to choose

whether and how to assess kindergarten children. Almost one-third

of the states reported that they were currently studying the issue of

readiness assessment, and/or in the process of implementing a new

statewide readiness assessment system.

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Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know 7

The need for “good” assessment data on kindergarten children is

becoming increasingly clear. Policymakers want data to determine

the characteristics of children when they enter school and to identify

gaps in children’s early experiences before they come to school.

Parents and teachers want accurate information on children’s

strengths and weaknesses to use to plan activities that will best

support children’s learning. Schools want an accurate picture of

children’s skills and abilities as a baseline for understanding results

from achievement tests in later grades.

The danger with these early assessments is that children will be

harmed by misguided assessment systems and poor use of assessment data. This is especially true for the “readiness” assessment

systems that many schools are implementing (see the National

Research Council’s Eager to Learn, 2000 report). The notion that a

child is “ready” for school implies that some children are “not

ready” and that results from assessments can be used to determine

children’s “readiness.” The National Educational Goals Panel Goal 1

Technical Planning Group on Readiness for School (1997) and the

Goal 1 Ready Schools Resource Group (1998)—groups of national

early childhood education experts—have clearly stated all children

are ready for school. Assessment data should not be used to keep

children from entering kindergarten nor determine their placement

in kindergarten–the potential for mislabeling and harming children

is too great. Yet school systems with limited understanding of early

childhood assessment are using kindergarten assessment data in

this manner (see the National Association of Early Childhood State

Specialists in State Departments of Education, 2000).

There is a role for appropriate schoolwide assessments during the

kindergarten year. The trick is to clearly define the purpose of such

assessments and to carefully plan how the data will be collected

and what will be done with the information. This guide is designed

to provide information on the complexities of assessment and to

help school systems develop assessments that minimize the chance

of any child being harmed by the misuse of assessment data.
Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

Complexities of Early

Childhood Assessment

Assessment of young children, including kindergartners, is difficult

for many reasons. The National Education Goals Panel Early

Childhood Assessment Resource Group (1998) outlined several

reasons why assessment of young children is complex, including

the following:

✒ Many areas of a child’s development–including physical,

social, emotional, cognitive, and language development–

are interrelated, and each area of development impacts a

child’s success in school.

✒ Young children’s development is rapid and uneven. Children

can change dramatically in a short period of time and may

be very advanced in one area and behind in another area

of development at the same time.

✒ Young children cannot complete traditional standardized

tests. They have not learned how to use pencils to mark

their answers on a test, have limited reading abilities, often

react unpredictably in test-taking situations, and have very

short attention spans.

✒ Children of this age are better able to show what they

know. It’s hard for them to talk about, much less write about,

what they know and can do.

✒ A young child’s performance on an assessment may reflect

his or her previous experiences more than his or her potential for success in school. While this is true for all children

on assessments, it is an especially important factor for

preschool children. Older children who have been in school

for a while have many more experiences in common than

preschool children–they have been exposed to a more

uniform curriculum and have had the opportunity to learn

information that is more “alike.” Preschool children, on the

other hand, come from widely divergent experiences–

some have and some haven’t been in group care, and for

those who have been in group settings, the type varies.

Therefore, the opportunities children have had to develop

skills and abilities before school are often vastly different.

For example, a child who has been in a preschool program

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Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

may score higher than a child

who has not been in preschool

because of what she has experienced in preschool. The results of

the assessment may show more

about experiences the child has

had than her potential for success

in school. The process of collecting data and interpreting its

meaning is challenging and must

be done carefully.

Growing Concerns

about Assessment

of Young Children

Given the complexity of early

childhood assessment and the

growing need for data on young

children’s skills and abilities, many

in the field have deep concerns

about assessing children in

kindergarten. A number of groups

and associations have published

position statements and guidelines for assessment of young

children (see Chart 1). The position

statements are based upon early

childhood education and child

development principles and are

designed to ensure that assessments conducted with young children are appropriate, beneficial, and useful. The principles outlined in this guide reflect the thinking

and research reflected in these position statements.

Taken together, the position statements urge educators and policymakers to

select and use assessments that

✒ Benefit children and the adults who work with children

✒ Are used for the purposes for which they are designed

✒ Provide useful, valid, reliable data

✒ Are linguistically and culturally appropriate

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Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

✒ Collect information through naturalistic observations

✒ Collect information on multiple developmental domains

✒ Include multiple sources of information

While many in the field of early childhood might argue against large-scale

assessment of kindergarten children, especially “readiness assessments” when

children first enter kindergarten, the fact is that assessments are increasingly

common. The challenge is to make sure that assessments are beneficial and

adhere to the principles outlined in these position statements.

Designing Assessments Systems:

Balancing the Need for Information

with Concern for Children

Assessing children in kindergarten is a balancing act: the need for

information on children’s skills and abilities must be balanced with

consideration for the difficulties inherent with early childhood assessments. There is no magic formula for designing a good assessment

system. Districts and state departments must determine what information they need and why, weigh their options, and plan assessment

systems based upon what they know about child development and the

children they serve.

The following general principles for selecting assessment measures provide the foundation for making good decisions about how

to assess children, not recommendations for specific actions or

measures. Thoughtful planning based upon the principles in this

resource book can lead to assessment systems that meet schools’

needs for assessment information and benefit children, teachers,

and parents in the process.

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Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

Principles for

Assessing

Kindergarten

Children

There are several basic principles for

assessing kindergarten children.

These fall into two basic categories:

the “shoulds” and the “should nots.”

Based primarily upon the work of the

National Education Goals Panel

Goal 1 Early Childhood Assessments

Resource Group (1998), the principles

provide a good foundation upon

which school systems can design

their wide-scale assessments.

“Assessment Shoulds”

Good assessments of kindergarten students should be consistent with

the following principles:

Purpose of the Assessment

Assessment instruments are designed for specific purposes and should

only be used for the purpose for which they were designed. Generally,

these purposes can be described within the following categories:

✒ Screening to “catch” children with suspected disabilities or

who are at risk for school failure: These screenings usually are

very quick and provide limited information about a child’s

abilities. They help educators select students for whom additional testing is needed to “rule out” or “rule in” a potential

learning problem or a need for specialized services.

✒ Supporting instruction by providing teachers with information on

children’s individual strengths and weaknesses: Teachers can use

this information to plan curricular activities for the entire class,

small groups, orindividual children. The purpose of instructional

assessment is to improve student achievement by providing

information on skills children have so that they can plan learning

activities geared toward what children already know and what

Kindergarten assessments

should

• Be used consistently with the purpose

for which the instrument was designed

• Be age appropriate

• Collect information on a range of

indicators of a child’s development

• Be naturalistic or authentic

• Be culturally and linguistically sensitive

• Accommodate children with

disabilities

• Collect information from more than one

source

• Provide information that schools can be

confident about

• Have a data collection process that is

realistic for schools and school

systems

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Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

they need to learn. Assessments that are used to improve

classroom instruction are usually conducted more than once

over a period of time so that the teacher has a comprehensive

picture of a child’s skills and abilities in a variety of learning

situations and often are closely related to the curriculum

being used in the classroom.

✒ Accountability assessments provide information on

children’s skills and abilities for two general purposes: to

track changes in the characteristics of children over time

and to provide data that can be used to evaluate programs.

This type of data is often collected when children enter

school to help educators and policymakers assess success

of early childhood experiences in preparing children for

school. Information on children’s abilities in kindergarten

can help identify gaps in earlier services and point to

improvements in early childhood programs. For instance, an

assessment system might collect information on children’s

immunizations and determine that the rate of up-to-date

immunizations in children entering kindergarten is

unacceptably low. A community could then choose to

implement programs to encourage parents to get their

children immunized. In short, accountability data are used

to evaluate services and/or monitor trends or changes in

child indicators over time. However, if the purpose of

collecting assessment data on children is to evaluate the

effectiveness of a particular program, the child assessment

data should only be one of many types of data included in

the evaluation. Other types of data, such as information on

how the program was implemented, should be combined

with the child measures to provide an informative

program evaluation.

It is useful to think about timeframes for the information being

collected to clarify the purpose of the assessment (see Figure 1).

Screening information captures information on children’s abilities

at the time they enter school so that the information can be used

within a short timeframe to determine the need for further evaluations or assessments (in other words, “now”). Classroom instruction

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Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

assessments are used by teachers to plan classroom activities

(or “looking forward”). Accountability or program evaluation

assessments provide data to assess children’s previous experiences

(or “looking back”).

Typically, assessment instruments are designed to address

only one of these purposes. It is important that school

systems select instruments based upon the purpose for their

assessment and use the information consistently with the

purpose for which the assessment instrument was designed.

Age Appropriateness

It is also essential that school systems select age-appropriate

assessment measures for kindergarten. Because of the wide variation between children’s abilities at this age, a good strategy is to

select instruments that are designed for children ages three through

seven. This increases the likelihood that the instrument will address,

or “pick-up”, the strengths and needs of most of the children,

including children who exhibit delays in particular areas of development and children who are more advanced. Instruments designed

for children five years and older will “miss” a significant number of

children because their skills and abilities will not be advanced

enough to “register” on the assessment. Similarly, assessment

instruments for younger children will not accommodate children

with skills that are above age-level.

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Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

Range of Indicators

Because the various areas of children’s development–physical, social,

emotional, cognitive, and communication–are highly interrelated,

ideally kindergarten assessment systems should capture information

on as many of the developmental domains as possible. A child who

has difficulty seeing (physical domain) will struggle in the classroom.

Likewise, a child who has difficulty handling frustration (social/

emotional domains) will have trouble in school. Assessment information that provides a complete picture of children’s development is

helpful for making decisions about the individual child and understanding the “readiness” of groups of children for success in school.

In instances where the assessment is designed to provide information related to a specific purpose–for instance, assessing children’s

emergent literacy skills in order to plan for literacy instruction–the

assessment should still collect data on a range of skill indicators

within the area being assessed. Kindergarten-age children demonstrate their skills and abilities in a variety of ways, and a good

assessment will collect a broad range of indicators to provide a

comprehensive picture of the child’s development within any particular subject area or developmental domain.

It is worth noting that some assessment instruments collect information on multiple domains, and some are designed for specific areas

of children’s development. It may be necessary to combine two or

more instruments to provide complete information on all areas of

children’s development. School systems should carefully think

about the purpose for the assessment and the type of data needed

to fulfill the purpose. Then assessments should be chosen to

provide a broad range of indicators to ensure the child has as

many opportunities as possible to demonstrate a particular skill

or ability.

Naturalistic or Authentic Assessments

Children are best assessed through natural or authentic methods.

“Real-life” tasks, examples of children’s work, observations of

children in naturalistic settings, and ratings of children’s everyday

behaviors tend to be more accurate reflections of their abilities.

When asked to perform a new task, to interact with a stranger

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Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

who might be collecting the information, and/or to participate in an

assessment activity in a location outside their regular classroom,

children often react with atypical responses–they may “clam up,”

become overly boisterous, or not understand what they are being

asked to do. It’s best to collect information from the child’s regular

classroom on tasks similar to what he or she is accustomed to and

from persons with whom he or she is familiar whenever possible.

Culturally and Linguistically

Sensitive Measures

Children’s culture and home language will greatly impact their performance on assessments and must be taken into account when selecting

assessments and interpreting the results. Their cultural experiences

impact what they know, how they demonstrate knowledge and abilities, and the way they will respond to assessment situations. Similarly,

their home language will impact how they understand assessment

directions and how they communicate their responses. Assessments

must be sensitive to these issues.

From another angle, cultural and linguistic biases can impact the

assessment data collection process. Any measure, no matter how well

designed or how valid and reliable, is produced within a particular

cultural and linguistic context. The types of skills assessed, the way

information is collected, and the importance placed upon particular

items, skills, and/or developmental domains are all impacted by the

cultural and linguistic background of the assessment development

process. Bias can be present in the

✒ Instrument itself: Particular items may be more familiar to

persons from a certain culture or better understood by

persons who speak a certain language.

✒ Observers who collect the information: Their record of

observations can be “colored” by their own value system

or ability to understand the language of the child.

✒ Raters who complete checklists: Teachers and parents may

be more familiar with the child’s culture and language but

still view the world through their own “lens” and have their

own understanding of the skills and abilities they are rating.

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Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

Most standardized assessments have been designed within the

middle-class, English-speaking, Caucasian culture. Schools must be

sensitive to the cultural and linguistic background of the children

they will be assessing and use every strategy possible to ensure

that assessments are appropriate for their children. If a school

system is using standardized assessments, they should be

✒ Developed specifically for the population and validated to

ensure that they provide comparable information with the

version developed in English

✒ Normed with groups similar to the students in the school

(reliability and validity have been established with children from the same–or as similar as possible–culture and

language backgrounds)

✒ Administered by persons who can read and speak the

child’s native language fluently

Non-standardized or informal assessments should also accommodate the child’s home language and culture. For instance, information provided by the parents should be collected in their home

language; classroom observers should be fluent in the child’s

language so they can understand what they have seen; and translators who may be assisting with the assessment process should be

well-trained on the assessment, fluent in both the child’s and the

assessment instrument’s language, and as unobtrusive as possible.

Accommodations for Children

with Disabilities

Children with disabilities often have difficulty with standardized

assessment procedures because the instruments typically are not

sensitive to their needs. And, in some cases, the actual scores may

be meaningless, as they do not represent the true abilities and

needs of the child. For children with physical impairments, it may be

impossible for them to physically perform some of the required

tasks because of their physical limitations (e.g., stacking cubes if

they have cerebral palsy and are limited in the use of their hands).

In actuality, they may be able to count the cubes and verbally guide

someone’s hand to stack them. In this case, the assessment would

present a distorted view of the child’s abilities.

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Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

Likewise, some children with disabilities do not develop skills in a

developmental pattern similar to other children. In an assessment

situation where testing items are typically sequenced, the child’s

true abilities would not be recognized. For example, a child may be

able to name the colors of the clothes she is wearing but not able to

identify the colors on the testing materials. In addition, children who

have cognitive or emotional disabilities typically need a longer

response time when responding to particular items.

For children with sensory impairments, such as vision or hearing

impairment, accommodations to facilitate their performance are

critical. This is especially true for communication. If a child has a

hearing impairment, gestures and sign language (if the child understands) would be necessary. And for a child with a vision disability,

explicit and detailed verbal instructions would be important.

Children with other types of disabilities may need to use a variety

of communication systems to participate in the assessment.

There are many things to consider when assessing children with

disabilities, but most important is the participation of the parents.

Parents are the most knowledgeable resources for information about

all children, particularly for children with disabilities. They know the

child’s true abilities and can be an excellent source of information

regarding adaptations that need to be made to facilitate the child’s

optimal performance during the assessment and in confirming the

accuracy of the results.

Including children with disabilities in assessment systems designed

to collect information on all children will require a great deal of

thought and planning to ensure that the information from the assessment is useful and appropriate. It is a good idea to consult with

specialists who are knowledgeable in the field of specialized

education services early in the assessment planning process to

ensure that the assessment strategies are fair and valid for children

with disabilities.

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Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

Multiple Sources and Types of Information

Depending on the purpose of the assessment, it may be advisable

to collect information from multiple sources and, in some cases,

with a variety of assessment methodologies. If the purpose of the

assessment is to understand individual children, especially for

instructional purposes, then collecting information from a variety

of sources can be especially helpful. Children usually display their

skills and abilities in different ways, so different sources of information are needed to adequately capture their true abilities.

It’s useful to collect information from people who have the opportunity to observe children in different settings–parents, preschool

and childcare teachers, school teachers, and other observers, such

as specialists, who may work with the child. Also, a variety of

methods can be used to collect information on individual children.

Checklists of abilities, collections of the child’s work, documented

classroom observations, and records of how children perform

during “hands-on” tests of specific abilities are examples of

different types of information that can be included in kindergarten

assessments. Again, the type of information collected will depend

upon the purpose of the assessment. A process where different

types of information are collected from a variety of sources may

not lend itself to a standardized data management/reporting

system, but it may be very helpful to the classroom teacher who is

using the information to gauge how best to support an individual

child’s learning.

Confidence in the Information:

Reliability and Validity

The degree of confidence you can have in the data and level of

comparability of data needed from assessments also vary according to the purpose of the assessment. It is extremely important that

school systems use assessments that have a proven track record–

that have been shown to provide reliable and valid data–for screening children. Likewise, it is highly advisable that accountability

assessments include standardized measures that yield reliable and

valid data. Without this proven track record, it’s difficult to have

confidence in the information that is collected and to generalize

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Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

conclusions from the assessment data. Generally, the broader and/

or more significant the implications of conclusions drawn from the

assessments results, the greater the need for assessment measures

with established reliability and validity.

Reliability refers to the extent to which a given assessment will

yield the same results when given multiple times. Validity is the

extent to which an assessment measures the characteristics or

abilities it is designed to measure. The best source for information

on a particular assessment instrument’s reliability and validity is the

manual that comes with the instrument. Although they sometimes

are hard to understand and interpret, the information in the manuals

can be invaluable in selecting or ruling out an instrument.

There are many good resources for information about the psychometric principles that should be taken into consideration when designing

assessment systems. The American Educational Research Association (1999), together with the American Psychological Association

and the National Council on Measurement in Education, has produced a document entitled Standards for Educational and

Psychological Testing that provides very useful information and

guidelines for assessments. Statisticians, testing and evaluation

experts, school psychologists, and others with training and experience in psychometrics and assessment can provide valuable guidance on the specifics of test properties. Persons planning an

assessment system should consult with someone with formal

training in assessment to determine the appropriate requirements

for reliability and validity based upon the purpose of the assessment and the type of information that will be collected. It is worth

noting that it is difficult to establish high degrees of reliability and

validity when measures are used with children under age six, so

reliability and validity are critical issues for assessments of kindergarten children.

Realistic Data Collection Processes

Assessments have a variety of requirements for data collection.

Some instruments require that the person collecting the information

be trained in psychometric principles while others can be administered by teachers with appropriate training. Some require a quiet

19
Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

room where the child can be alone with an adult who is administering the instrument, while others can be carried out during everyday

classroom activities. Some assessments require parent input;

others do not. Some can be administered within a short period of

time, and others require a lengthy period of time to collect the

information needed. Some instruments are very expensive, and

others are fairly inexpensive.

What’s important is a match between the requirements for collecting

assessment information and the school’s capabilities. If teachers are

the only persons available to collect information, the school will need

an instrument that can be administered by persons with minimal

training in psychometric principles. If the school system wants to do a

screening during their kindergarten “round up” or registration, an

instrument that can be completed quickly and with several children at

one time would be appropriate. A large school system with a limited

budget to purchase assessment instruments would not want to select

the most expensive instrument available.

Careful consideration should be given to the logistical

requirements of assessment systems–think through every

step of the process–before selecting an instrument or a

data collection process. Make sure there is a good match

between what the process will require and the school’s

capabilities to meet those requirements.

Assessment

“Should Nots”

In addition to the “shoulds” outlined

above, there are a few “should nots” for

assessment planning. These “should

nots” are absolutely critical to ensure

that the assessment information collected is valid and used appropriately.

Kindergarten

assessments

should not be

• Used to make high-stakes

desisions

• Pencil-and-paper tests

• Used for a purpose other

than for what they were

designed

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Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

High-Stakes Decisions

Results from the types of “mass” assessments described in this guide

should not be used to make high-stakes decisions about a kindergarten

child’s education. In other words, results from screenings or other

assessments before (or at the beginning of) kindergarten should not

be used to decide whether a child can or cannot start kindergarten. The potential for making a mistake is too

high, and the cost of making a mistake for even one

child is too high. Decisions on a child’s placement

in school should be based upon authentic

assessments of his/her work in the classroom, input from parents, teacher observations (if the child

has been in a group setting prior to kindergarten),

and any specialized evaluations (such as speech,

language, or occupational therapy evaluations) that

may be warranted, plus the results from any schoolwide

“readiness” assessment or screening.

Likewise, decisions about whether a child goes to first grade should

not be made based upon the child’s scores on any one instrument.

Standardized assessments are one source of information

that can be taken into account when making decisions

about children’s educational placement, but they should

only be a very small part of what is considered when

making judgements about an individual child’s performance.

In fact, a national panel of experts, the Goal 1 Early Childhood

Assessments Resource Group for the National Education Goals Panel

(1998), studied the use of assessments for decisions on children’s

educational placement and developed a definitive recommendation–

”there should be no high-stakes accountability testing of individual

children before the end of the third grade.” Furthermore, the American

Educational Research Association’s (2000) recent position statement

on high-stakes testing in education also cautions against basing any

decision that affects an individual student’s (of any age) educational

opportunities on test scores alone. Scores on standardized assessments should be complemented with information from instructional

assessments, teacher observations, parent input, and any other data

that is relevant when making decisions about whether an individual

child should be retained in kindergarten.

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Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

It’s worth mentioning that the same cautions apply when gathering

data about the performance of a particular program, school, or

teacher (AERA, 2000). Data from student scores on standardized

early childhood assessments are limited in their usefulness for

drawing conclusions about the performance of a program, school,

or teacher. As discussed earlier, data from kindergarten assessments can vary by the type of instrument used, the types of experiences the children have had before kindergarten, and a number of

other factors. Therefore, any performance evaluations that include

information from child assessments should also include information

on other indicators of the particular teacher’s or programs’ performance. The principle is the same for high-stakes decisions about

children, teachers, and programs–they should be based upon

multiple indicators of performance.

Pencil-and-Paper Standardized Tests

Pencil-and-paper standardized tests are not appropriate for children in kindergarten, for many of

the reasons outlined earlier. Children this age

typically do not know how to use a pencil

effectively, so they cannot represent their

knowledge very well on standardized

pencil-and-paper measures. In addition,

the formal testing process is “at odds”

with how children this age typically learn

and demonstrate what they know–through

“hands on” experiences–and cannot begin to

capture many of the domains (such as social and

emotional development and approaches toward learning) that are

essential to children’s success in school. In short, standardized

pencil-and-paper tests should not be used with kindergartners.

Using an Instrument for a Purpose Other Than

the Purpose for Which It Was Designed

Assessment instruments are typically designed for one purpose–

screening, instructional enhancement, or accountability. Due to the

difficulty of assessing young children and the limitations of most measurement designs, it is rare to find an instrument that can accomplish more

Pencil-and-Paper

Tests

22
Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

than one purpose, especiallyif the data needs

to demonstrate a high degree of reliability

and validity. It’s tempting to try to use an

instrument for more than one purpose–

for instance, to use scores from a

screening instrument as an accountability measure–but it is usually not

advisable. Because the instrument was

not designed to collect the right type

of information, the conclusions school

systems might draw from the assessment

data can be misleading and/or inaccurate.

Designing assessment systems to collect more

than one type of information must be done with great care and

typically requires expertise in testing and measurement, child

development, and program evaluation that is beyond the scope of

this guidebook.

How Assessment Information

Is Collected

Assessments vary according to the type of information collected and how

information is collected. Assessment systems should collect the type of

information needed to address the purpose for the assessment, and data

collection strategies should match the school system’s capability to

complete the process successfully in order to yield useful information. The

descriptions below provide a brief overview of the general categories of

assessment approaches.

Methods of collecting assessment information typically can be

categorized as formal or informal. Formal assessments are conducted according to predetermined procedures and are designed to

collect information about children in a consistent manner. Formal

assessments yield data that is more easily compared across children–the information was collected in a similar manner across

children, and the assessment results tend to be synthesized in a

manner that can be compared across children. An example would

be a screening instrument that provides information on the number

of tasks a child was able to complete and some type of normative

data that show how the child’s performance compares with a

sample of children who previously completed the assessment.

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Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

In informal assessments, the information collected on children’s

abilities may vary from child to child, and, therefore, the information

may not be comparable across children. There may be a standard

set of instructions for how to collect the information, but the actual

data collection process may vary. For example, a teacher may make

informal notes of her observations of a child in her classroom.

Information provided through informal assessments may be very

helpful for teachers and parents, but cannot easily be compared

from one child to another.

The following provides a brief description of the primary approaches schools use to collect assessment data from kindergarten children. Several of the techniques can be either formal or

informal, depending upon how the information collection process

is designed.

✒ Mastery tasks ask children to perform specific skills

andthen record the results of the children’s performance.

An example would be a screening instrument that asks

children to hop on one foot, draw a line, etc., and then

records whether the child can or cannot demonstrate the

particular skill. To determine if a child can perform a

specific skill, teachers can observe the child within

regular classroom activities or “pull” the child out from

classroom activities and ask him/her to perform the

tasks. The data on the child’s performance can be collected in a number of forms such as checklists or rating

scales. The factor that determines whether a particular

measure is a mastery task is that the child is asked to

perform the specific skill rather than relying on a person’s

observations that may or may not include an opportunity

to demonstrate the particular skill.

✒ Checklists, questionnaires, and rating scales

ask someone with knowledge of the child to indicate

whether the child has demonstrated specific abilities.

The person completing the assessment might be an

objective observer who does not know the child but

has observed the child for a period of time or might be

a parent or teacher who is asked to document the child’s

abilities based upon his/her own observations.

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Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

✒ Portfolio assessments collect examples of the

child’s work and record observations of the child’s

behavior during regular classroom activities. Portfolio

systems typically provide a specified framework for

organizing the assessment information collected, guide

lines for how and what types of information to collect, and

a system for pulling the information together to yield

conclusions from the data. Ideally these portfolio systems

are based upon, or consisten with, the curriculum that is

being used in the classroom.

✒ Observational records provide documentation of a

child’s behavior and performance. The observations

may be anecdotal records completed by a teacher or

parent, or they may be more formal documentation of a

child’s behavior in a situation “set up” to see how a

child responds.

Assessment methods can also vary by the number of times the

information is collected. Some assessments are “one shot” assessments where the information is collected once. Others incorporate

information that is collected over time to provide multiple examples

of the child’s performance and/or to show growth or change in the

child’s abilities. Information collected multiple times provides a more

valid assessment of a child’s capabilities because it gives the child

many opportunities to show what skills he or she has mastered.

Matching the Information Collection Method

with the Purpose for the Assessment

As with all of the assessment principles discussed above, it is critical

that the method for collecting assessment information is consistent

with the purpose of the assessment. Assessment information must be

collected in a manner that “matches” the purpose for collecting the

information. For instance, information that will be used to compare

cohorts of children across time should be collected in a standardized

or formal fashion to ensure that the data is comparable across time.

Likewise, screenings should be standardized. Assessment information

collected for teachers to use in designing instructional curriculum

activities should be based on “real-life” observations and collected

over a period of time.

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Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

The following chart provides a summary of the type of information

and the data collection approaches that are typically most appropriate for each of the three assessment purposes. While school systems

may find that types of information other than those specified are

appropriate for various purposes, the following can be considered

guidelines for “best practices” in assessment of kindergarten children

or a picture of what the assessment typically looks like.

Assessment Safeguards

Several important safeguards must

be considered when designing assessment systems to minimize the possibility

that the assessment process will harm

any child, parent, teacher, or school. No

matter what the purpose of the assessment,

the type of information collected, or how

the information will be used, the following

safeguards should be part of the assessment planning process.

Assessment

Safeguards

• Informed consent

• Confidentiality

• Sampling

• Communicating the

results

26

11
Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

Legal and Ethical Issues Related

to Assessment

An extensive body of legislation and litigation has established specific

safeguards to protect children and their families. Two prominent federal

laws–the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 1990 and

1997) and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA, 1974)–

established basic requirements for assessing children and the use of

assessment information. Two basic principles from this legislation are

informed consent and confidentiality.

Informed Consent

Generally, informed consent is required when information is collected from/on individual children. This means that a parent or

guardian must give written permission for the information to be

collected. However, informed consent is not required for most of the

assessments schools conduct as a part of their regular educational

program. Informed consent is required for specialized assessments,

such as evaluations conducted to determine if a child has a particular disability. If there are questions about whether informed consent

would be required, it is advisable to consult someone knowledgeable with the legal requirements for assessments.

Confidentiality

Confidentially is essential for all assessment systems. All information that is collected on children, families, and schools should be

strictly confidential and available only on a “need to know” basis.

Identification numbers should be used to track information rather

than names whenever possible. Records should be kept in locked

cabinets. Raw data should be available only to a limited number of

individuals who are directly responsible for compiling the information, and reports should be carefully planned and reviewed to

ensure that no group-level data information can be traced back to

an individual child.

Sampling Versus Universal Data Collection

A general rule of thumb is to collect information from the minimum

number of children necessary to fulfill the purpose of the assessment. This means that in some cases collecting information from a

sample of children is sufficient, while in other cases it may be

27
Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

necessary to collect information from all children. For instance,

assessments for screening and instructional purposes typically should

be done for all kindergarten children to “catch” all children in need of

additional evaluations and to provide individualized instruction for

all children. Information used for accountability purposes, such as

program evaluation and tracking trends over time, typically can be

collected on a random sample of children. Sampling techniques are

available to ensure that the conclusions from a sample of children are

reliable and can be generalized to the larger population of children.

Use of sampling minimizes the possibility that information collected

during the assessment will be used to make high-stakes decisions

about individual children or teachers. It is highly advisable to consult

with persons who have knowledge of statistics, sampling, research

design, and assessment to determine whether sampling is appropriate

for your assessment system and, if so, the size and selection criteria

for the sample.

Information Management–Communicating

the Results

Information on kindergarten children’s abilities is of great interest

to the general public, educators, and policymakers. The nation has

invested significant resources in improving early childhood programs and services. Many policymakers are looking for ways to

demonstrate whether the resources have been a good investment.

Information from kindergarten assessments collected for accountability purposes can be used as one source of information to

evaluate the success of early childhood programs. At the same

time, schools are under increasing scrutiny, and accountability

requirements have been extended to lower and lower grades.

There is increasing pressure to demonstrate improved student

achievement with younger and younger children. Kindergarten

assessment information could be included in some of these accountability efforts. In short, the information collected could be

politically “charged” from a number of different perspectives.

How assessment information should be communicated at different

levels of the “system”–the school, the district, the state department

of education, early childhood programs, parents, and the general

public–is a critical question for any group designing a kindergarten

28
Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

assessment system. Thoughtful planning on where information will

be stored, who will “own” the information, how information will be

aggregated and reported, and with whom the information will be

communicated are all essential pieces of an assessment system.

These issues are true for all types of assessment information that is

collected, but particularly for accountability assessments.

Assessment planners should decide early in the planning process

what type, how, when, and with whom results will be communicated. For example, some data may be used for internal program

improvement purposes and other data may be released to the

public. Other considerations for this planning process include the

resources–personnel and financial–that will be necessary to

analyze and report the data. This data management decisionmaking process should involve representatives from all the stakeholder groups potentially affected by conclusions that might be

drawn from the information. Careful planning on how results will be

analyzed and communicated can increase stakeholder cooperation

in the assessment process and the likelihood that the data will be

used appropriately.

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Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

Getting Down to “Brass Tacks”: Designing

Kindergarten Assessment Systems

Given the complexity of kindergarten assessments, how does a school

district or state department of education begin to design an assessment system and select instruments? This section of the guidebook

provides steps for designing assessment systems, a planning guide to

walk school systems through the process of designing an assessment

system, and selected resources.

Designing Assessment Systems

Step by Step

With the “shoulds” and “should nots” in mind, a school system is

ready to design its kindergarten assessment system. Here are some

steps in the process:

1) Form an assessment design team with persons from many

different perspectives. The composition of the team may

vary according to the entity that is designing the assessment system. For purposes of designing a statewide

assessment system, the team would ideally include representatives from the early childhood provider community,

school district and state department personnel (including

teachers), parents, persons who work in higher education

teacher-preparation programs, policymakers, and persons

with expertise in assessment and/or research design. At the

district level, this team would ideally include administrators,

teachers, parents, school support personnel—such as special

education teachers and school psychologists—and someone

from the early childhood programs that serve children before

they enter kindergarten. This group should help design the

assessment system, oversee implementation of the assessments,

and help with interpretation and use of the assessment results.

2) Determine the purpose for the assessment: Why is the

information needed? How will it be used? Remember, if

assessment information is needed for more than one

purpose, it’s likely that more than one assessment measure

will be needed. Typically, a separate assessment strategy

30
Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

will be needed for each of the different purposes for

assessing children.

3) Determine what information is needed to fulfill the purpose. What skills, abilities, and/or characteristics of

children need to be assessed? Is information needed from

multiple domains/areas of children’s development? Do you

need standardized data that can be compared across

children? Do you need highly individualized data that

teachers can use in the classroom? Do you need information

from multiple sources–teachers, parents, and/or outside

observers? Do you need information that is collected over

time to show changes in a child’s learning, or is a “one-shot”

assessment sufficient?

4) Based upon the information needed, decide what assessment approaches are appropriate. Carefully think through

your state or district’s ability to implement different approaches–are the different approaches you are considering realistic for your school system?

5) Identify specific assessment measures that might be appropriate

to collect the information needed. Is the school system already

implementing any type of assessment that might be appropriate?

Do you need to look for new assessment measures?

6) Obtain as much information on each instrument as possible.

7) Evaluate the instruments to determine how they are suited to

meet the school system’s needs. Think about the following

questions:

✒ Are they designed for the kindergarten-age child (the

three-to-seven year range)?

✒ Are they appropriate for the school population?

✒ Do they collect information on the developmental

domains that are important for your purpose?

✒ Do they collect information in the most natural manner

possible? Would children be comfortable in the

assessment situation?

✒ Does your school system have the ability to fulfill the

logistical requirements of the instruments–training for

the information collectors, physical facilities to complete the assessment process, budget resources sufficient to purchase the needed materials, ability to

aggregate and report the data if you need to, etc.

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Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

8) Select the most promising instruments and evaluate them

carefully. Get samples of the instruments and review the

content. Try them out with a sample of children. Get input

from persons who may have used them. Use assessment

publishing companies as a resource–they often can provide

contact information for schools that have used the assessment measure and will be able to answer questions you

may have about the measure.

9) Develop consensus from the assessment design team on

which instrument(s) would be best suited for your school

system’s needs and capabilities. Determine if other sources

of information (such as parent surveys) are needed to

supplement the information collected through the formal

assessments. Remember, it may be necessary to use more

than one instrument to get a complete picture of the children you are assessing. For instance, an instrument may

collect information on only one or two domains of

development. A second instrument can be used to collect

information on other domains of development that are not

included on the first instrument.

10) Develop plans to implement the assessment system. Be sure

to include the following:

✒ Training for persons gathering the information

✒ Communication with all persons affected by the process–parents, teachers, administrators, community

service providers, and policymakers (be sure they

know the purpose, what’s going to take place, how

the information will be used, and what feedback

they will receive)

✒ How you will obtain the assessment instruments

✒ Logistical details for implementing the assessments

(remember, persons who are not directly involved

may need to help with logistical details–for example,

the custodian may need to keep a room open longer

than normal or set a room up differently during the

assessment process)

✒ Provisions for informed consent (if needed) and

confidentiality

✒ Ways to collect supplemental information

32
Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

✒ How/when the assessment results will be shared

and with whom

✒ How the assessment results will be used

✒ How the assessment process will be evaluated

11) Try the plan out with a few children, including everyone who

will be involved in the process–teachers, parents, and other

data collectors. Be sure to include children who may

have particular circumstances that might affect the assessment process or results, such as children with disabilities and

children for whom English is not their native language.

12) Make revisions in your plan

13) Implement the assessment system

14) Evaluate how well the system is working. Consider

the following:

✒ Is information being collected consistently

across children? Across classrooms?

Is information being recorded promptly and

correctly?

✒ Does everyone (especially parents) understand what is going on?

✒ Do teachers feel that the process is working?

15) If the system was designed to provide data on groups of

children, compile the assessment information, review the

results, and develop reports according to the plan for how

the information would be used.

16) Develop recommendations for revisions in the assessment

process that will be implemented in the next round of information collection. It is evident that a great deal of planning

and “up-front” work is necessary in designing assessment

systems. However, the investment is well worth the time spent

carefully going through each of these steps. The end result will

be information that is credible and useful.

33
Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

Planning Resources

Assessment System Guide

Appendix A includes a helpful planning guide that “walks” school

systems through the process of designing an assessment system. The

guide can be used as a practical tool to help districts and state

departments think through issues that should be addressed when

planning large-scale assessment systems. The intent is to provide a

general framework for planning purposes–one that can be adapted

to meet the needs of school systems involved in the process of

designing kindergarten assessment systems.

Assessment Resources

Appendix B provides a listing of helpful resources. Schools will find

publications, associations, and websites that can provide useful

information for the assessment planning process. The document

Assessing Kindergarten Children: A Compendium of

Assessment Instruments (Niemeyer & Scott-Little, 2001) is a

companion document for this guidebook and provides detailed

information on over 50 assessment instruments. School systems may

find the Compendium a helpful place to begin evaluating which

instruments will best meet their needs for assessment data. The

Compendium is available through SERVE at www.serve.org or

by calling 1-800-352-6001.

34
Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

Conclusions

It’s an exciting time in early childhood. Evidence from research has

provided increasing documentation of the importance of early childhood experiences in children’s success in school. Also, policymakers

and the public have invested unprecedented resources in early childhood programs. Good assessment systems are essential from both of

these perspectives: to provide credible information to help teachers

improve instruction and to document the condition of children when

they enter school for accountability purposes. Assessment systems

must be carefully designed to ensure they provide information that

fulfills the purpose for the assessment and to increase the likelihood

they will benefit children, families, teachers, and the educational

systems that support their learning. This planning guide is a helpful

resource for state departments and school districts. The ultimate goal is

to facilitate a decision-making process that will result in assessment

systems that are useful and beneficial to all the stakeholders involved in

the process.

35
36 Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know
Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know 37
38 Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know
Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

Appendix B:

Assessment Resources

The following list provides a number of helpful resources for state

departments of education and school districts that are designing

assessment systems. The resources include publications, associations, and websites that address many of the complex issues

associated with assessment of young children.

American Educational Research Association. (July 2000). Position Statement Concerning High-Stakes

Testing in Pre K–12 Education. www.aera.net/about/policy/stakes.htm

American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, & National Council on

Measurement in Education. (1999). Standards for educational and psychological testing. Washington, DC:

American Educational Research Association.

CLAS (Culturally & Linguistically Appropriate Services) Early Childhood Research Institute.

www.clas.uiuc.edu/aboutclas.html

FairTests Publications. Assessment of Young Children. National Center for Fair & Open Testing, 342

Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139 (617-864-4810).

Graue, M.E., & DiPerna, J.C. (2000). Redshirting and early retention: Who gets the “gift of time” and what

are its outcomes? American Educational Research Journal, 37, 509-534.

Karweit, N.L., & Waski, B.A. (1996). A review of the effects of extra-year kindergarten programs and

transitional first grades. Baltimore, MD: Center for Research on Effective Schooling for Disadvantaged

Students, The Johns Hopkins University.

National Association for the Education of Young Children. (1988). Testing of young children: Concerns and

Cautions. Washington, DC: NAEYC (1-800-424-2460).

National Center for Research on Education, Statistics, and Student Testing

www.cse.ucla.edu

National Center for Educational Outcomes

www.coled.umn.edu/nceo

National Center for Educational Statistics - K–12 Practitioner’s Circle

www.nces.ed.gov/practitioners

National Education Goals Panel Early Childhood Assessments Resource Group. (1998). Principles and

recommendations for early childhood assessments. Washington, DC: US Department of Education.

www.negp.gov/reports/prinrec.pdf

Niemeyer, J., & Scott-Little, C. (2001). Assessing kindergarten children: A compendium of assessment

instruments. Tallahassee, FL: SERVE.

Pianta, R.C., & Cox, M.J. (Eds.). (1999). The transition to kindergarten. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.

39
Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know

Sources Cited and Consulted

American Educational Research Association. (July 2000). Position Statement Concerning

High-Stakes Testing in PreK–12 Education. www.aera.net/about/policy/stakes.htm

Benner, S.M. (1992). Assessing young children with special needs. White Plains, NY: Longman

Publishing Group.

Cohen, L.G., & Spenciner, L.J. (1994). Assessment of young children. White Plains, NY: Longman

Publishing Group.

Graue, M.E., & DiPerna, J.C. (2000). Redshirting and early retention: Who gets the “gift of

time” and what are its outcomes? American Educational Research Journal, 37, 509-534.

Kagan, S.L., Moore, E., & Bredekamp, S. (Eds.). (1995). Reconsidering children’s early

development and learning: Toward common views and vocabulary. National Education

Goals Panel Goal 1 Technical Planning Group. Washington, DC: US Department of Education.

www.negp.gov/reports

Meisels, S.J. (1999). Assessing readiness. In R.C. Pianta, & M.J. Cox, (Eds.)., The transition to

kindergarten. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.

National Association for the Education of Young Children. (1988). NAEYC Position

Statement on Standardized Testing of Young Children.

www.naeyc.org/about/position/position_statement1.htm

National Association of Early Childhood Specialists in State Departments of Education.

(2000). Still! Unacceptable Trends in Kindergarten Entry and Placement.

http://ericps.crc.uiuc.edu/naecs/position/trends2000.html

National Education Goals Panel Goal 1 Ready Schools Resource Group. (1998). Ready

schools. Washington, DC: US Department of Education. www.negp.gov/reports

National Education Goals Panel Early Childhood Assessments Resource Group. (1998).

Principles and recommendations for early childhood assessments. Washington, DC: US

Department of Education. www.negp.gov/reports/prinrec.pdf

National Research Council. (2000). Eager to learn: Educating our preschoolers. (Executive

Summary). Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Nuttall, E. V., Romero, I., & Kalesnik, J. (Eds.). (1999). Assessing and screening preschoolers:

Psychological and educational dimensions. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Southern Early Childhood Association. (1999). Assessing Development and Learning in

Young Children: A Position Statement of the Southern Early Childhood Association.

www.seca50.org/position_assessment.html

Wortham, S.C. (1990). Tests and measurement in early childhood education. Columbus, OH:

Merrill Publishing Company.

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Assessing Kindergarten Children: What School Systems Need to Know 41

About SERVE

SERVE Main Office • P.O. Box 5367 • Greensboro, NC 27435 • 336-315-7400 • 800-755-3277 • Fax 336-315-7457

John R. Sanders, Ed.D. • Executive Director

www.serve.org

SERVE is an education organization with the mission to promote and support the continuous improvement of educational

opportunities for all learners in the Southeast. The organization’s commitment to continuous improvement is manifest in an

applied research-to-practice model that drives all of its work. Building on theory and craft knowledge, SERVE staff

develop tools and processes designed to assist practitioners and policymakers with their work, ultimately, to raise the

level of student achievement in the region. Evaluation of the impact of these activities combined with input from affected

stakeholders expands SERVE’s knowledge base and informs future research.

This vigorous and practical approach to research and development is supported by an experienced staff strategically located throughout the region. This staff is highly skilled in providing needs-assessment services, conducting

applied research in schools, and developing processes, products, and programs that inform educators and increase

student achievement. In the last three years, in addition to its basic research and development work with over 170

southeastern schools, SERVE staff have provided technical assistance and training to more than 18,000 teachers and

administrators across the region.

SERVE is governed by a board of directors that includes the governors, chief state school officers, educators, legislators,

and private sector leaders from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina.

At the core of SERVE’s business is the operation of the Regional Educational Laboratory. Funded by the U.S.

Department of Education’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement, the Regional Educational Laboratory at

SERVE is one of ten organizations providing research-based information and services to all 50 states and territories.

These Laboratories form a nationwide knowledge network, building a bank of information and resources shared

nationally and disseminated regionally to improve student achievement locally. SERVE’s National Leadership Area,

Expanded Learning Opportunities, focuses on improving student outcomes through the use of exemplary pre-K and

extended-day programs.

In addition to the Lab, SERVE operates the Eisenhower Mathematics and Science Consortium for the Southeast and the

Southeast Initiatives Regional Technology in Education Consortium. SERVE also administers a subcontract for the

Region IV Comprehensive Center and has additional funding from the Department to provide services in migrant

education and to operate the National Center for Homeless Education.

Together, these various elements of SERVE’s portfolio provide resources, services, and products for responding to regional

and national needs. Program areas include Assessment, Accountability, and Standards; Children, Families, and Communities; Education Policy; Improvement of Science and Mathematics Education; Education Leadership; School Development

and Reform; and Technology in Learning.

In addition to the program areas, the SERVE Evaluation Department supports the evaluation activities of the major

grants and contracts and provides evaluation services to state and local education agencies in the region. The

Technology Support Group provides SERVE staff and their constituents with systems, technical assistance, and

software applications. Through its Communications and Publications Department, SERVE publishes a variety of studies,

training materials, policy briefs, and program products. Through its programmatic, technology support, evaluation, and

publishing activities, SERVE also provides contracted staff development and technical assistance in specialized areas

to assist education agencies in achieving their school improvement goals.

SERVE’s main office is at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, with major staff groups located in Tallahassee,

Florida, and Atlanta, Georgia, as well as satellite offices in Bonita Springs, Florida; Durham, North Carolina; and Shelby,

Mississippi. Unique among the ten Regional Educational Laboratories, SERVE maintains policy analysts at the state

education agencies of each of the states in its region. These analysts act as SERVE’s primary liaisons to the state

departments of education, providing research-based policy services to state-level education policymakers and informing

SERVE about key state education issues and legislation.
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