Wide-scale assessment systems to collect data on the characteristics of large numbers of young children have become increasingly

common in recent years, and educators, both at the federal and the state level, have seen increasing pressure to assess children

at younger ages. With this increasing pressure has come concern regarding the purpose of assessments, the nature of assessment

processes, and the implications for how the data are being used. In response, policymakers, practitioners, and researchers have

struggled to design and implement early childhood assessment systems that are valid, reliable, fair, and practical.

Assessing the State of State Assessments: Perspectives on Assessing Young Children is a compilation of perspectives on assessment

issues written by authors deeply involved in developing and implementing wide-scale assessment systems. Taken together, the

chapters provide practical and theoretical insights into four areas critical in developing such systems: design, instrumentation,

implementation, and data utilization. In the chapters, noted experts describe not only the challenges inherent in early childhood

assessment but also strategies for meeting those challenges.

SRASSA
A special report on wide-scale early childhood assessment systems

Edited for the Regional Educational Laboratory 

at SERVE by:

Catherine Scott-Little

 The Regional Educational Laboratory at SERVE

Sharon Lynn Kagan

 Teachers College, Columbia University

Richard M. Clifford

 The National Center for Early Development and Learning

Assessing the State

of State Assessments:

Perspectives on 

Assessing Young Children
Credits

Produced by

Associated with the School of Education,

University of North Carolina at Greensboro

First Printing 2003

Edited by

Donna Nalley, Publications 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 refl ect the views or policies of the National 

Institute for Education Sciences, 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 National Institute for Education 

Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, under contract no. ED-01-CO-0015.

ASSESSING THE STATE OF STATE ASSESSMENTS

Perspectives on Assessing Young Children
Acknowledgments

This document is a collection of papers that refl ect discussions that took place during a 

symposium on readiness assessment systems and the authors’ collective experience working on 

issues related to wide-scale early childhood assessment systems. Special thanks go to the two 

organizations that funded the symposium: The A. L. Mailman Family Foundation and the 

National Institute for Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education. 

We would also like to thank the following contributing authors for their thoughtful work 

that is refl ected in this report:

 Tamara Halle, Child Trends

 Gary T. Henry, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University ndrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University

 John M. Love, Mathematica Policy Research

 Susan Muenchow, American Institutes for Research

Lawrence J. Schweinhart, High/Scope Educational Research Foundation

 Martha Zaslow, Child Trends

The following reviewers for this document provided helpful suggestions for which we 

are grateful:

 Susan Andersen, Iowa Department of Education

Glyn Brown, The Regional Educational Laboratory at SERVE

Donna Bryant, Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute

 Beth Garriss Hardy, The Regional Educational Laboratory at SERVE

 Marilou Hyson, National Association for the Education of Young Children

 Samuel Meisels, The Erikson Institute

We also would like to thank the following support staff who were instrumental in making 

arrangements for the symposium:

Louise Scrivani, Rosemarie Andrews, Michael Spencer, and Amanda Payne

ASSESSING THE STATE OF STATE ASSESSMENTS

Perspectives on Assessing Young Children

iii
Cindy Bagwell

North Carolina Department of Public Instruction

Betty Bardige

A. L. Mailman Family Foundation

Glyn Brown

The Regional Educational Laboratory at SERVE

Donna Bryant

Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute

Lindy Buch

Michigan Department of Education

Richard M. Clifford

Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute

Dawn Denno

Ohio Department of Education

Lucy Dwight

National Conference of State Legislatures

Laurie Ford

University of British Columbia

Theresa Garcia

California Offi ce of Secretary for Education

Rolf Grafwallner

Maryland State Department of Education

Sarah Greene

National Head Start Association

Tamara Halle

Child Trends

Doris Hallford

Missouri Division of Family Services

Sharon Hawley

California Department of Education

Jane Henderson

California Children and Families Commission

Gary Henry

Andrew Young School of Policy Studies,

Georgia State University

A. Baron Holmes

South Carolina Budget & Control Board

Marilou Hyson

National Association for the Education 

of Young Children

Sharon Lynn Kagan

Teachers College, Columbia University

Katherine Kamiya

Florida Partnership for School Readiness

Naomi Karp

Institute of Education Sciences

John Love

Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.

Kelly Maxwell

Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute

Kerry Mazzoni

California Offi ce of Secretary for Education

Kathleen Dufford-Melendez

The Regional Educational Laboratory at SERVE

Sandra Miller

Ohio Offi ce of Early Childhood Education

Linda Mims

South Carolina Department of Education

Marsha Moore

Georgia Offi ce of School Readiness

Susan Muenchow

American Institutes for Research

John R. Sanders

The Regional Educational Laboratory at SERVE

Sharon Ford Schattgen

Missouri Department of Elementary and 

Secondary Education

Larry Schweinhart

High/Scope Educational Research Foundation

Catherine Scott-Little

The Regional Educational Laboratory at SERVE

Pam Shapiro

Georgia Offi ce of School Readiness

Sandra Skolnik

Maryland Committee for Children

Helene Stebbins

National Governors Association

Kathy R. Thornburg

Child Development Laboratory, University of Missouri

Marce Verzaro-O’Brien

Region IV Head Start Quality Improvement Centers

Jerry Walker

Ohio Department of Education

Catherine Woodall

North Carolina Partnership for Children

Marty Zaslow

Child Trends

 

 

Finally, we would like to thank the symposium participants listed below for their ongoing 

work on behalf of children and families and their willingness to share their experiences 

and insights during the symposium.

iv
Table of Contents

 Page

Acknowledgments iii

Preface 1

Assessing Young Children: What Policymakers Need to Know and Do 5

Sharon Lynn Kagan, Teachers College, Columbia University

Catherine Scott-Little, The Regional Educational Laboratory at SERVE

Richard M. Clifford, The National Center for Early Development and Learning

A Risk Management Approach to Readiness Assessment: 

Lessons from Florida 13

Susan Muenchow, American Institutes for Research

Assessing School Readiness: System Design Framework and Issues 25

Gary T. Henry, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University

Issues in Implementing a State Preschool Program Evaluation in Michigan 37

Lawrence J. Schweinhart, High/Scope Educational Research Foundation

Instrumentation for State Readiness Assessment: Issues in Measuring

Children’s Early Development and Learning 43

John M. Love, Mathematica Policy Research

Attachment One: 51

“Readiness” Dimensions Identifi ed by the Goal One Technical Planning Group 

of the National Education Goals Panel

Attachment Two: 53

How Head Start Performance Measures are Aligned with the Goal One Dimensions

Statewide School Readiness Assessments: Challenges and Next Steps 57

Martha Zaslow and Tamara Halle, Child Trends

About the Editors 67

About the Authors 69

About the National Center for Children and Families: Advancing Policy,

Education, and Development 71

About the National Center for Early Development and Learning 75

About SERVE 77

Acknowledgments

Preface

Assessing Young Children: What Policymakers Need to Know and Do

 System Design Framework and Issues

Issues in Implementing a State Preschool Program Evaluation in Michigan

 Challenges and Next Steps

Preface

Acknowledgments

ASSESSING THE STATE OF STATE ASSESSMENTS

Perspectives on Assessing Young Children

Preface

Assessment of children around the age of kindergarten entry has become a “hot” topic ssessment of children around the age of kindergarten entry has become a “hot” topic Afor educators, researchers, and policymakers. Pressure for wide-scale assessments to for educators, researchers, and policymakers. Pressure for wide-scale assessments to A collect data from large numbers of preschool and kindergarten children is mounting collect data from large numbers of preschool and kindergarten children is mounting 

at both the federal and state level. On the federal level, Head Start and Even Start regulations 

require that assessment data be collected from very young children. State-level assessment 

systems are also being developed, and with these efforts come challenges with regard to 

implementing assessment systems. For example, a national survey (Saluja, Scott-Little, & 

Clifford, 2000) found 13 states had established statewide screening or assessment programs 

for children entering kindergarten in the fall of 1999. Five additional states required 

statewide screenings or assessments but allowed local districts to decide how to conduct 

the assessments. An additional 16 states had initiatives in place at the time of the survey to 

develop recommendations for how children should be assessed. Clearly, there is an increasing 

tendency for wide-scale assessments to be conducted with very young children.

Developing and implementing such assessment systems, at any level in any program, is 

not an easy matter. With the increasing pressure to collect data on the profi ciency of large 

numbers of young children in particular areas of development has come a corresponding 

increase in concerns about the purpose of the assessments, the nature of assessment processes, 

and the implications for how the data are being used. Why are assessments being conducted, 

and are states clear on the purposes of such assessment? Do they distinguish between, for 

example, assessment to improve instruction and assessment to make high-stakes decisions 

about children or programs? How can assessment data be collected on a wide scale in a 

manner that is technically sound and benefi cial for both the children and the stakeholders 

interested in using the results? And how are the data being used? Is the use matching the 

original intentions, or are the instruments designed for one purpose being used for another?

These questions plague the minds of policymakers, assessment specialists, early childhood 

educators, and even parents. Complicating the issue even further is the well-documented 

fact that assessment of young children is diffi cult and requires specialized techniques. Young 

children’s inability to read, the episodic nature of their learning, and their stress in unfamiliar 

settings with unfamiliar people all contribute to the special challenges facing those concerned 

about assessment of young children. Finally, many argue that there are a very limited number 

of suitable assessments for effectively measuring the domains that are of great importance 

to the developing young child; emotional development and approaches toward learning are 

noteworthy in this respect. 

In trying to develop assessment systems and practices that are well-constructed and fair, states 

have struggled. At best, there is potential for these assessment systems to produce credible 

and useful information. At worst, they can produce unintended negative consequences for 

children and programs. In designing such systems, states have struggled to at minimum “do 

ASSESSING THE STATE OF STATE ASSESSMENTS

Perspectives on Assessing Young Children

1
Preface

no harm.” There are no roadmaps for the development of early childhood assessment 

systems. Such wide-scale assessment systems are a new undertaking fraught with challenges 

and deplete of models and experiences to draw from. States are blazing new trails as they 

attempt to develop assessment systems that are sensitive to the information needs of 

policymakers and programs and, at the same time, the needs of children.

Despite the challenges, states are developing wide-scale assessment systems to collect data 

on children’s skills and characteristics around the age of kindergarten entry. A number of 

assessment systems are being put into place across the nation, with a variety of purposes 

and data-collection methodologies. In order to learn from states that are developing such 

systems and to identify possible next steps to support efforts to develop sound assessment 

systems, representatives from nine states with experience in establishing such systems were 

invited to participate in a symposium on assessment systems. The symposium, entitled 

Assessing the State of State Assessments, was designed to provide an opportunity for persons 

working most closely with state assessment systems to identify common challenges and 

share ideas. With funding from the A. L. Mailman Family Foundation and the U.S. 

Department of Education, Offi ce of Education Research and Improvement (OERI), Dr. 

Sharon Lynn Kagan of Teachers College, Columbia University; Dr. Richard M. Clifford 

from the National Center for Early Development and Learning; and Dr. Catherine ScottLittle from the Regional Educational Laboratory at SERVE hosted the symposium on 

December 12–14, 2001. Teams from California, Georgia, Florida, Maryland, Michigan, 

Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, and South Carolina came together with researchers 

and representatives from national organizations such as the National Association for the 

Education of Young Children (NAEYC), the National Governor’s Association (NGA), 

and the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) to discuss issues associated with 

establishing wide-scale assessment systems for young children.

Prior to the symposium, several focus groups were held to determine the most critical 

issues that states face as they develop such systems. As a result of the focus groups, four 

issue categories emerged:

Design issues

Instrumentation issues

Implementation issues

Data utilization issues

During the symposium, participants had the opportunity to share their challenges within 

each of the categories and to learn from each other. The result was a fruitful discussion 

of common challenges and possible solutions for states that are putting wide-scale early 

childhood assessment systems into place.

This document presents a compilation of perspectives on assessment issues discussed 

during the Assessing the State of State Assessment Systems symposium. Four papers 

were commissioned prior to the symposium to provide a framework for symposium 

discussions, one to address each of the four issue categories identifi ed above. Two papers, 

one on next steps for the early childhood assessment fi eld and one on implications for 

policymakers, were prepared after the symposium to synthesize the issues discussed. 

The result is this special report on wide-scale early childhood assessment systems that 

is designed to address the four critical areas—design issues, instrumentation issues, 

implementation issues, and data utilization issues—from a variety of perspectives. 

This document does not purport to have covered all the issues related to wide-scale 

early childhood assessment systems. Rather, it is a compilation of issues that were 

most salient for the group of persons attending the symposium. Likewise, this is not a 

document that provides “solutions” or “answers” to many of the issues that plague efforts 

ASSESSING THE STATE OF STATE ASSESSMENTS

Perspectives on Assessing Young Children

2
Preface

to develop wide-scale assessment systems for young children. Rather, it is an edited 

volume, with diverse perspectives represented. Indeed, readers will fi nd overlapping as 

well as contradictory perspectives on various issues across the chapters. The presence of 

contradicting views on early childhood assessment issues is an indicator of the complexity 

of the issues being addressed. We hope that we have been successful in raising issues that 

are signifi cant for the fi eld in order to stimulate further discussion.

Readers will fi nd that chapters in this volume include both broad issues related to 

purposes of assessment systems and policies, as well as narrower, more technical issues 

such as instrumentation. The fi rst chapter, Assessing Young Children: What Policymakers 

Need to Know and Do by Sharon Lynn Kagan, Catherine Scott-Little, and Richard M. 

Clifford, reviews basic principles that should guide early childhood assessment policies 

and outlines critical policy issues related to assessment systems. Given the complexities of 

early childhood assessment and the increasing need for credible and reliable information 

about the skills and characteristics of very young children, policymakers face the dilemma 

of developing policies that can both produce the data needed and protect the well being of 

children and early childhood programs. This chapter offers critical issues for consideration 

by policymakers as they promulgate assessment systems that are appropriate and effective.

The next chapter, A Risk Management Approach to Readiness Assessment: Lessons from 

Florida Florida by Susan Muenchow, defi nes several readiness assessment terms and presents four by Susan Muenchow, defines several readiness assessment terms and presents four 

potential benefi ts of readiness assessment systems. Drawing from experiences in designing 

and implementing a readiness assessment system in Florida, Muenchow outlines several 

potential issues that can lead to unintended negative consequences for such assessment 

systems and then suggests strategies for minimizing the potential risk of unintended 

negative consequences. Included among the strategies are a set of principles to guide the 

development and implementation of Florida’s readiness assessment system. 

Following these two chapters that address broader issues, the discussion turns to more 

technical issues associated with the design and implementation of early childhood 

assessment systems. In Assessing School Readiness: System Design Framework and Issues, 

Gary Henry argues that a key design element of an assessment system is discerning the 

purpose for which the assessments are being conducted. The assessment system design 

should fl ow from the purpose. Henry discusses one purpose—informing the public and 

policymakers about the adequacy of societal investments in children’s earliest years—in 

detail. Important issues that should be taken into consideration when decisions are made 

about the design of an assessment system are also presented.

In the following chapter titled Issues in Implementing a State Preschool Program Evaluation 

in Michigan, Lawrence Schweinhart addresses a variety of design and implementation 

issues encountered by the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation’s evaluation 

of the Michigan School Readiness Program. Presenting a range of practical issues, such 

as the cost of program evaluations, and technically complex issues, such as validity 

and reliability issues associated with using teacher observation data, the chapter shares 

program evaluation strategies that have been used in Michigan. Michigan’s two-tiered 

program evaluation strategy—with intensive data collected from children in a select 

group of programs and program quality data and child risk factor data collected from all 

programs—is described. 

The fi nal chapter that examines technical issues related to assessment, Instrumentation for 

State Readiness Assessment: Issues in Measuring Children’s Early Development and Learning

by John Love, provides a systems-level review of the elements of readiness, along with 

current political and educational factors that impact readiness assessment systems. Progress 

made in development and utilization of early childhood assessment instruments and the 

challenges that still remain are discussed. Finally, criteria for evaluating an individual 

measure, as well as a set of measures used in an assessment system, are presented.

ASSESSING THE STATE OF STATE ASSESSMENTS

Perspectives on Assessing Young Children

3
Preface

Six signifi cant challenges to developing technically sound and just assessment systems 

are discussed in the last chapter of this document. Statewide School Readiness Assessments: 

Challenges and Next Steps Challenges and Next Steps by Martha Zaslow and Tamara Halle presents a synthesis of by Martha Zaslow and Tamara Halle presents a synthesis of 

the challenges outlined in previous papers and discussions at the symposium, along with 

examples of possible solutions and recommendations for next steps. This thoughtful 

summary of challenges states face provides an overview of issues that need to be addressed 

as wide-scale early childhood systems move forward.

The purpose of this special report is to provide a discussion of the complex issues involved 

in planning and implementing wide-scale assessment systems in order to guide policy 

and technical decisions within states currently involved in implementing wide-scale 

assessment systems, as well as states considering such systems. The ideas presented within 

the chapters represent each author’s perspective, rather than the views of the volume’s 

editors. The information presented will be helpful to early childhood state specialists in 

state departments of education, researchers, child advocates, and policymakers involved in 

designing assessment systems to collect data from large numbers of pre-kindergarten and/

or kindergarten-age children. While it is increasingly clear that there is no perfect widescale early childhood assessment system, assessment systems that benefi t both children and 

the users of assessment data can be developed with careful planning and consideration of 

the issues outlined in this report. 

Catherine Scott-Little,

Expanded Learning Opportunities Project Director

The Regional Educational Laboratory at SERVE

Sharon Lynn Kagan, 

Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor of Early Childhood and Family Policy

Teachers College, Columbia University

Richard M. Clifford, 

Senior Scientist and Co-Director

National Center for Early Development and Learning

Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute

Reference

Saluja, G., Scott-Little, C., & Clifford, R. M. (2000). Readiness for school: A survey of 

state policies and defi nitions. Early Childhood Research and Practice, 2(2). 

ASSESSING THE STATE OF STATE ASSESSMENTS

Perspectives on Assessing Young Children

4
Assessing 

Young Children:

What Policymakers

Need to Know and Do

Abstract

Policymakers interested in developing sound assessment systems that benefi t children and 

programs face great challenges. Following background information about the nature of early 

childhood assessments, this paper provides recommended policy considerations, followed 

by specifi c policy actions that can be taken to promote technically sound and effective early 

childhood assessment systems.

Introduction

Assessing children’s readiness for school is an issue of mounting political, educational, and 

social concern. For example, in an unprecedented move, President Bush has called for the 

assessment of all three- and four-year-old children in the nation’s Head Start program. While 

many states have had provisions that encourage assessments for this age population, few have 

moved as comprehensively or audaciously (Doherty, 2002, p. 66). Indeed, even those states 

that have serious intentions regarding the use of assessments for preschool-aged children 

have encountered signifi cant challenges as they embark on this goal (Hoff, 2002). Are these 

calls for assessing young children appropriate? Under what circumstances are assessments 

meaningful, and how can they help children while providing policymakers the information 

they need? The purpose of this policy brief is to explore the nature of assessment for young 

children and the challenges it poses. In addition, critical considerations are offered for those 

policymakers wishing to advance appropriate and effective assessment policies.

Why Assess Young Children?

Numerous rationales for assessing young children have been offered. First and most germane 

to this policy brief is policymakers’ interest in knowing how many children are ready for 

school. Often, they assume that a blanket assessment of readiness exists, is easy to use, is 

culturally fair, and can be implemented with limited effort and cost. This is not the case. The 

second rationale is that such assessments would be able to tell us if preschool programs were 

doing their job (NRC/IM, 2001) based on the assumption that effective preschool programs 

should be judged on their ability to produce academically ready children. However, early 

childhood programs cater to widely diverse populations, often do not serve children on a 

full-time or even on a regular basis, and according to every empirical study done, do not have 

ASSESSING THE STATE OF STATE ASSESSMENTS

Perspectives on Assessing Young Children

5

Sharon L. Kagan, Teachers College, Columbia University

Catherine Scott-Little, The Regional Educational Laboratory at SERVE

Richard M. Clifford, National Center for Early Development and Learning
Assessing Young Children:

What Policymakers Need to Know and Do

the resources to do their jobs well. The third rationale for assessing young children, and 

perhaps the most important, is that well-constructed and well-implemented child-sensitive 

assessments can improve the instructional program and parents’ knowledge of their children’s 

development. The fourth and fi nal rationale is that assessments will help programs identify 

children who may need additional services, as in the case of children with disabilities. 

Clarifying Assessment: Enunciating Principles

Each of these purposes of assessment differs and brings with it opportunities and 

challenges. Because so much confusion regarding assessment abounds—especially 

regarding its defi nitions and purposes—the National Education Goals Panel, through its 

expert panel on readiness assessment for young children, has articulated baseline purposes 

and principles to frame both analysis and action (Shepard, Kagan, & Wurtz, 1998). 

There are four primary purposes of assessment: (1) to support learning 

and instruction, (2) to identify children for additional services, (3) to 

evaluate programs and monitor trends, and (4) to provide information for 

high-stakes accountability.

Each assessment should be tailored to a specifi c purpose and should be reliable, 

valid, and fair for that purpose.

Assessments should be age- and linguistically-appropriate, both in content and 

method of data collection.

What’s So Special About Assessing Young Children?

Appropriate to student assessment in general, the principles stated above are particularly 

important for the assessment of young children. Because young children learn in ways 

and at rates that are different from that of older students, the content and procedures of 

their assessments must be somewhat different (Kagan, Moore, & Bredekamp, 1995). For 

example, young children learn best by listening, observing, questioning, and experimenting, 

and because they represent their knowledge by showing or talking and have limited abilities 

to communicate through written language, conventional paper-and-pencil tests appropriate 

for older students are not adequate for them. Young children’s learning is also highly 

integrated and extremely episodic, so tests given at one point in time and focusing in one 

content area (e.g., numeracy or literacy) are not adequate proxies for the full scope and 

depth of the knowledge young children possess. It is often necessary to use multiple means 

of assessing children to gain an adequate understanding of their level of knowledge and skill 

in any given area. Young children are often inexperienced in adapting to new situations, 

and as a result formal testing settings do not effectively capture their development. Finally, 

because young children’s achievements are strongly infl uenced by their past learning 

opportunities as well as their ability to learn, we cannot assume that measures of past 

learning are evidence of what might be learned (Graue, 1993). 

What Do We Do?

We know we need information about young children. Parents want to know how their 

youngsters are doing, teachers need systematic information to plan appropriate programs, 

and policymakers need to know the degree to which public investments in programs for 

young children are paying off. The question is what can and should policymakers do 

to honor the principles of assessment and to advance the production of necessary data? 

Are these legitimate reasons for conducting assessments while children are still getting 

ready for school reconcilable with inherent diffi culties? The answer is yes. Carefully 

designed and executed broad-scale assessments can provide valuable information for all 

of these purposes. There are several important steps that can be taken to help ensure that 

ASSESSING THE STATE OF STATE ASSESSMENTS

Perspectives on Assessing Young Children

6
Assessing Young Children:

What Policymakers Need to Know and Do

assessments are good for children, practitioners, and policymakers. The next section details 

these steps followed by policy recommendations. 

First, recognize that effective assessments for young children are not easy to 

conduct. The assessment industry that has been operative for decades with regard to 

older students has not, until recently, applied its talents and understandings to younger 

children. There are no perfect, off-the-shelf, easy-to-do assessments that will address the 

multiple purposes indicated above. There are assessments that may fi ll part of the bill, but 

these need to be examined for their scientifi c, cultural, age, and linguistic appropriateness. 

In addition, although informal assessment is the sine qua non of quality early care and assessment is the sine qua non of quality early care and 

education, formal assessment has not been part of the skill repertoire of early educators. assessment has not been part of the skill repertoire of early educators. 

Therefore, to implement effective formal assessment procedures, training early educators 

in their use and application must take place. Signifi cant lead-time and fi nancial resources 

will be necessary to develop an effective large-scale assessment system. 

Given the challenges described above, it is questionable whether formal assessments can 

be used presently to refl ect the effectiveness of investments made in preschool education. 

In other words, there are critical needs related to (a) the instruments themselves, (b) the 

training of those who use them, and (c) the uses of the data that need to be addressed. 

These issues and how they are handled directly predict the success of the assessment 

enterprise. Recognition of the complexity of the task is the fi rst step toward development 

of a successful assessment system. 

Policy Implications: Federal and state governments should support efforts to plan 

for the development and implementation of assessments that will address the various 

purposes of assessments. Such planning efforts should include parents, policymakers, 

early educators, assessment specialists, and the public. Planning must address issues 

related to who will be included in the assessment; the relationship between local, 

state, and national accountability needs; measures to be used/developed, sampling 

techniques to be employed, and funding available for the assessment. 

Second, think assessment systems, not individual assessments. Because there 

is such widespread interest in assessment, it is often tempting to use one assessment 

instrument for several purposes. As noted above, this is not generally advisable because 

assessment instruments are designed with specifi c intentions that are not effectively 

transferred. The purposes of the assessments must be delineated, and the parameters of an 

assessment system clearly defi ned. Is the assessment system expected to track changes in 

children’s condition over time? To evaluate a preschool program? To provide information 

to help teachers and parents work effectively with children? A combination of these 

purposes? Once the purposes are delineated, the structure of the system can be created and 

appropriate strategies implemented. It is better to accomplish one goal for assessment well 

than to try to do many things and end up doing all of them poorly.

Policy Implications: Programs and/or states must think broadly, and often across 

traditional agency boundaries, about the nature of the assessments that are needed. 

Adequate resources and personnel must be made available for the conceptualization 

and implementation of a system over time, phasing in elements of the system.

Third, support the development of adequate assessment instruments. To date, 

the early childhood/child development fi eld has relied on instruments that have been 

developed for primary use in fi eld trials or program evaluations. As such, many of the 

instruments, because of their length, technicalities, and cost, are not suitable for use for 

large-scale assessments across a variety of settings. New kinds of instruments, appropriate 

to mass use, must be created. In addition, many available instruments tend to be 

domain specifi c, with the result that not all the domains of development now associated 

ASSESSING THE STATE OF STATE ASSESSMENTS

Perspectives on Assessing Young Children

7
Assessing Young Children:

What Policymakers Need to Know and Do

with readiness (e.g., physical health and motor development; social and emotional 

development; approaches toward learning; language, literacy, and communication; and 

general knowledge) are adequately addressed (Kagan et al., 1995). For example, a recent 

review of the literature concerning the state of our ability to predict future developmental 

status noted that there are better across-time predictions of children’s cognitive 

development than of their socioemotional development (LaParo & Pianta, 2000). 

Instruments that address diverse cultures are lacking, as are assessments in languages 

familiar to and considerate of children’s home language and culture. Equally important, 

there is some confusion surrounding the intentions of such assessment: Is the purpose of 

assessment to determine initial levels of English language profi ciency, to determine content 

mastery in fi rst and/or second language, or to assign children to appropriate instructional 

settings? Clear goals for any assessment effort are essential for success. 

Policy Implications: Prior to investing large sums of public dollars in the assessment 

of young children, federal and/or state governments should provide funding to 

evaluate the effi cacy of current assessment instruments for the purposes needed. To 

the extent that appropriate assessments do not exist, public funds should be invested 

in instrument development. 

Fourth, design an approach to assessment that is sound and will produce 

reliable and meaningful results. Assessing young children typically requires multiple 

methods, including teacher and parental evaluation of children’s skills and abilities. Some 

strategies for collecting such information are particularly sensitive to bias. When the 

results of assessments can have a direct impact on the children or on the teachers (e.g., 

they are high-stakes tests), extreme care is needed to ensure that the results are not biased 

by the self-interest of these informants.

Policy Implications: Adequate resources must be committed during the design phase 

of any assessment system to ensure that the rights and well-being of children and staff 

are well-protected, while at the same time obtaining valid information to accomplish 

the goals of the endeavor.

Fifth, support in-service professional development for those who conduct 

the assessments. Assessments that are used for instructional improvement, as well as 

assessments for tracking or program evaluation purposes, can and should be administered 

by teachers who work directly with children. In many cases, given very high turnover 

rates and limited training entry requirements, those who work with young children are 

not familiar with formal assessment. The lack of training also means many are not wellequipped to translate the assessment results into meaningful instructional practices. 

Mandated training in assessment for early educators should be considered, as a part of 

their preservice education where appropriate and as a part of ongoing in-service education. 

Training is also needed for those who are not classroom-based and are performing 

assessments. In all cases, assessors must understand the unique characteristics of young 

children and must be prepared to adapt to diverse early childhood settings.

Policy Implications: In all legislation that mandates assessment and/or professional 

development, ensure that the early educators have the opportunity to learn how 

to assess young children and how to effectively use the data to plan programs and 

to report to parents. Require uniform training for any assessors who are assessing 

children to provide data that will be used for tracking or evaluation purposes. 

Professional associations and agencies governing professional training should 

develop guidance and formal requirements for professional development programs 

regarding training in assessment.

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Assessing Young Children:

What Policymakers Need to Know and Do

Sixth, recognizing that the majority of early education takes place outside 

of formal programs, plan for the involvement of family childcare and other 

providers in the assessment system and in the accompanying professional 

development. Long overlooked, family childcare provides services to young children 

and their families, often serving as an information hub for parents. In addition, kithand-kin care is another critical element in providing services for young children in this 

country. All of these providers need to be able to accurately assess young children and to 

use the information to inform their practice and the parents of the children they serve. 

Determining how best to engage this diverse group of providers, many of whom are not 

licensed or registered, presents a challenge that needs to be addressed if we want all of 

America’s children ready for school. 

Policy Implications: Consider the unique situation of family childcare as well as 

kith-and-kin care and design assessment systems that can benefi t these adults and 

the children they serve. To that end, a special national task force on family and 

relative childcare should be established to address these unique challenges.

Seventh, make provisions for including parents and other family members 

in the assessment process. Parents and other family members spend more time than 

anyone else with children before they come to school; they know their children best. 

Parents and other family members can provide a wealth of information about children’s 

abilities and characteristics, but they are often left out of the assessment process. Most 

commonly, parents are asked to fi ll out a cursory kindergarten registration form to provide 

basic information, such as where the child lives, and are not asked to provide information 

about the child’s skills and interests. 

Policy Implications: Include opportunities for parents and other family members 

to provide information about children as part of the assessment process. Surveys and 

checklists are effi cient ways for parents to provide their important perspective on a 

child to the kindergarten teacher for instructional assessments and for tracking or 

program evaluation assessment systems.

Eighth, understand that readiness results from a combination of factors, all 

of which must be assessed. While the points above address early childhood assessment 

in general, it has been noted that the results from early assessments make, at best, only 

small to moderate contributions to the predictability of children’s early school success, 

a conclusion that also obscures the extent to which non-child factors predict readiness 

(Kagan, Rosenkoetter, & Cohen, 1997; La Paro & Pianta, 2000). Non-child factors 

include, at a minimum, the role of the family and the nature of children’s experience 

in early learning settings (e.g., the childcare and school contexts). To discern children’s 

readiness, then, it is critical to examine the experiences to which they have been exposed 

and the nature and degree of such exposure. We need to understand the nature of the 

parenting children have received and the nature and quality of their preschool experiences. 

We also need to know the degree to which schools are ready for the unique learning needs 

of young children (National Education Goals Panel, 1998). These factors link to form the 

composite of children’s readiness for school.

Policy Implications: Policymakers should provide support for the development 

and implementation of readiness assessments that embrace non-child dimensions of 

readiness, including assessments of schools’ readiness for children and communities’ 

support for young children and their families. 

Ninth, clarify the way, and by whom, readiness information will be used and 

disseminated before the data are collected. As noted above, multiple rationales 

for assessing young children exist and often collide with one another. By being quite 

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Assessing Young Children:

What Policymakers Need to Know and Do

intentional regarding the purposes of the data collection, not only can the instruments 

and process be designed appropriately but the collected data will also have the greatest 

utility. If, for example, evidence of the effectiveness of investments in preschool education 

is needed, it is not suffi cient to garner information on assessments of child well-being 

only. Monitoring and tracking the status of children at kindergarten entry must be linked 

to data on program participation, expenditures, and quality in order to meet this goal. 

Moreover, if this is the goal, then clear ways of communicating information to relevant 

audiences must be anticipated. Discerning effective ways to report information in a timely 

and relevant way while not oversimplifying or distorting the data demand attention.

Policy Implications: When calling for assessment information, be precise about 

the purposes of the data and the ways in which the data will be reported and used. 

Incorporate such information into legislation and regulation.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is important to remember that effective programs are grounded in 

effective assessment. To be effective, assessment must be done intentionally and with care 

if the intended results are to be achieved. Conventional assessment, including groupadministered, norm-referenced standardized tests are not appropriate for young children. 

Similarly, it is not appropriate to use assessments developed for one purpose for others. 

As a result, new assessment strategies and approaches are needed. Tinkering with existing 

instruments or processes will not be suffi cient to address the needs of young children or 

the needs of policymakers and administrative agencies that need and deserve the data.

When all is said and done, suitable assessments for young children are feasible and 

desirable, so long as the investments in their development are made. Much like the fi eld 

of early education itself, assessment is commanding much attention, with the sense that 

capacity already exists. And much like the fi eld itself, early childhood assessment lacks 

the infrastructure to support its immediate implementation. Many things can and should 

be done now, and not all of these will yield that data that policymakers want for the 

next legislative session. Rather, the assessment of young children should be regarded as 

an investment to be made over time. As quality care and education is requisite to young 

children’s optimal development, so too is effective assessment requisite to quality early care 

and education. Both necessary and complex, neither will happen overnight or without the 

oversight of thoughtful, caring policymakers. 

References

Doherty, K. M. (2002). Early learning: State policies. Quality Counts 2002, Building 

Blocks for Success: State Efforts in Early Childhood Education [Special issue]. Education 

Week, 21(17).

Graue, M. E. (1993). Ready for what? Constructing meanings of readiness for kindergarten. 

Albany: State University of New York Press.

Hoff, D. (2002). Measuring results. Education Week Special Edition, 17, 48–52.

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

development and learning: Toward shared beliefs and vocabulary. Washington, DC: National 

Education Goals Panel.

Kagan, S. L., Rosenkoetter, S., & Cohen, N. (Eds.). (1997). Considering child-based results 

for young children: Defi nitions, desirability, feasibility, and next steps. New Haven, CT: Yale 

Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy.

ASSESSING THE STATE OF STATE ASSESSMENTS

Perspectives on Assessing Young Children

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Assessing Young Children:

What Policymakers Need to Know and Do

La Paro, K. M., & Pianta, R. C. (2000). Predicting children’s competence in the early 

school years: A meta-analytic review. Review of Educational Research, 70(4), 443–484.

Meisels, S. J. (1987). Uses and abuses of developmental screening and school readiness 

testing. Young Children, 42, 4–6, 68–73.

National Education Goals Panel. (1998). Ready schools: A report of the Goal 1 Ready School 

Resource Group. Washington, DC: Author.

National Research Council and Institute of Medicine. (2001). Getting to positive outcomes 

for children in child care: A summary of two workshops. Board on Children, Youth, and 

Families, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: 

National Academy Press.

Shepard, L., Kagan, S. L., & Wurtz, E. (1998). Principles and recommendations for early 

childhood assessments. Washington, DC: National Education Goals Panel. 

ASSESSING THE STATE OF STATE ASSESSMENTS

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A Risk Management Approach

to Readiness Assessment: to Readiness Assessment:

A Risk Management Approach

Lessons from

Florida

Abstract

In conjunction with school readiness initiatives, many states are calling for assessments of 

preschool and kindergarten-age children. Drawing especially on lessons from Florida, this 

paper reviews the potential benefi ts and risks of school readiness assessment and then suggests 

some strategies for risk management. Principles developed by the Florida Partnership for 

Children to guide development of their assessment system are included. Proposed strategies to 

help maximize the potential benefi ts of readiness assessment and to minimize the risks include 

(a) involving child development specialists and stakeholders in the planning process, (b) 

developing a set of principles for the assessment system, (c) clarifying that no one instrument 

will fi t all purposes of assessment, (d) articulating the costs of a responsible assessment 

system, (e) clarifying the procurement process, (f) releasing readiness data in conjunction 

with program quality and demographic data, and (g) making the case for state participation 

in a national evaluation of program effectiveness. The paper concludes that a uniform school 

readiness assessment is useful for providing benchmark and trend data on the status of young 

children across counties or school districts but cannot substitute for program evaluation. 

Introduction

For many years, early childhood professionals discouraged the practice of formal readiness 

assessment for young children. Six professional organizations, including the National 

Association for the Education of Young Children and the Association for Childhood 

Education International, issued a joint statement in 1986 discouraging the use of 

standardized testing for preschool children (Saluja, Scott-Little, & Clifford, 2000; 

International Reading Association, 1986). Within the last few years, however, a 

number of states have begun to call for assessments of preschool and kindergartenage children in conjunction with school readiness initiatives. Without abandoning 

their concerns about the risks associated with readiness assessment, early childhood 

professionals are struggling with how to respond to legitimate requests for 

information. The question has become not whether to assess young children, but how to 

do so in a manner that is developmentally appropriate and that causes no harm. Beginning 

with an explanation of the use of the term “assessment,” this paper will review the potential 

benefi ts and risks of school readiness assessment and then suggest some strategies for risk 

management. The paper focuses on the experience with readiness assessment in Florida where 

the author served as the fi rst director of the Partnership for School Readiness.

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The question has become not 

whether to assess young children, 

but how to.

Susan Muenchow, American Institutes for Research
A Risk Management Approach to 

Readiness Assessment: Lessons from Florida

Use of the Term “Readiness Assessment”

For purposes of this paper, the use of the term “readiness assessment” will not be limited 

to a single snapshot of the child but may include various components, of varying intensity, 

and conducted by a range of personnel. It is important to explain the broad use of the 

term at the outset because some of the misunderstandings regarding assessment stem 

from confusion over the meaning of the term. Components of an assessment system may 

include a developmental screening to identify children in need of further evaluation for 

possible developmental delay, observation of children over a period of time for purposes of 

instructional improvement, and the use of one or more assessment instruments for purposes 

of program evaluation. In discussions of accountability, policymakers often use terms such 

as “assessment” and “screening” interchangeably; their primary interest, however, is in child 

assessment as a means to program evaluation. In this paper, “readiness assessment” refers 

to a system that may include all of the above components—developmental screening and 

evaluation, instructional assessment, and program evaluation—so long as the purpose of 

each system component is clear and its use appropriate to its purpose.

Potential Benefi ts and Purposes of Readiness Assessment

As has been well-articulated by others (Shepard, Kagan, & Wurtz, 2001), there 

are at least four potential benefi ts or purposes of readiness assessment. The 

purposes will be reviewed here as follows: (1) identifying children with special 

needs and health conditions, (2) individualizing and improving instruction, (3) 

evaluating program effectiveness, and (4) obtaining benchmark data on the status 

of children at the local, state, and community level.

1. Identifi cation of Children with Special Needs 

or Health Conditions

The fi rst and clearest reason for readiness assessment is to identify children with special 

needs or health conditions. Child development specialists have long expressed the 

importance of early identifi cation and treatment of special needs. In the wake of the 

popularization of research on the development of the brain, state legislators have become 

interested in the concept of certain “windows of opportunity” for the development of 

vision, hearing, emotions, and language, and the idea that the fi rst fi ve years of life have 

a lasting impact on a child’s physical, emotional, and intellectual development. State 

laws requiring universal hearing screening for newborns and vision screenings or exams 

for children prior to kindergarten entry represent one positive response to the interest in 

early identifi cation of special needs and health problems. Some states are also enacting 

requirements for screening all children enrolled in state-funded early care and education 

programs in order to determine if the children should be referred for evaluation for 

possible developmental delay. Although identifi cation and treatment of special needs 

should occur long before kindergarten entry, the design of a readiness assessment system 

provides the opportunity to include screening components at birth, during well-child 

visits, and during participation in a variety of early education and care experiences. 

Furthermore, a screening upon kindergarten entry offers an opportunity to identify 

conditions that, for whatever reason, have not been previously detected.

2. Individualizing and Improving Instruction

The second reason for embracing readiness assessment is to seize the opportunity to 

individualize and improve instruction at both the preschool and kindergarten level. 

Parents of children enrolled in preschool programs want feedback on how their children 

are developing and what can be done at home and in the program to help a child’s 

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Purposes of readiness assessment

Identifying children with 

special needs

Improving instruction

Evaluating programs

Obtaining benchmark data
A Risk Management Approach to 

Readiness Assessment: Lessons from Florida

physical, emotional, cognitive, and language development. Teachers in early childhood 

programs welcome assistance in how to better understand the children in their care. When 

a state law requiring developmental screening of all children enrolled in state-subsidized 

childcare was enacted in Florida, childcare administrators and teachers at fi rst complained 

that there were no new funds to implement the program and that the workforce was not 

up to the task. But after piloting the screening (Ages & Stages) in eight areas of the state, 

the same administrators and teachers wanted to continue the screening even if new funds 

were never provided. The reason was that they saw the effort to conduct the screening not 

only as a way to identify possible disabilities but also as the best training in the observation 

of young children that many of the teachers had ever received. Similarly, teachers piloting 

the Desired Results Developmental Profi le in California reported the observation tool 

helped them to think in terms of the “whole” child, across developmental domains. In 

short, as Meisels and Atkins-Burnett (2000) point out, the assessment (in this case, a 

simple screening) cannot be separated from the intervention or early education and care. 

The value of the assessment lies not only in the information obtained on the child’s status 

but also in the fact that the teacher begins to “know” the child well enough to improve the 

early care and education for the child.

Similarly, as children enter and progress in kindergarten, they benefi t from the teacher 

spending some time assessing their individual learning styles, strengths, and weaknesses. 

The average expenditure per child for a public K–12 education in the United States is more 

than $92,000 according to the National Center for Education Statistics (2001), based on 

13 years of education at the average annual expenditure of $7,079 per student. Imagine 

embarking on any other comparable investment of resources without fi rst taking the time 

to conduct some type of initial assessment of the person one is attempting to assist. Just as 

a surgeon would not start an operation without fi rst diagnosing and assessing the patient’s 

overall health condition, a teacher should not start a year of instruction before having an 

opportunity to get an initial reading of each child’s social-emotional, cognitive, motor, and 

language development. For parents and teachers, instructional improvement may be the 

most important reason to support readiness assessment. 

3. Holding Early Childhood Programs Accountable 

The primary current interest of national and state policymakers in school readiness 

assessment, however, is in accountability—evaluating the effectiveness of early childhood 

programs in preparing children for school and holding the programs in some way 

accountable. The interest in readiness assessment can be viewed as just the fi rst step in the 

broader effort to hold publicly funded education for all age groups accountable. More 

specifi cally, the call for readiness assessments arises from the ongoing debate in the United 

States regarding whether it should be a national priority to invest in early childhood programs 

and, if so, for which children and at what level of expense. Although investments in early 

childhood programs have increased substantially at both the national and state levels in recent 

years, astute policymakers, including advocates as well as opponents of increased investment, 

realize that serving all currently eligible children, much less all children, would cost a great 

deal more. Legislators, told that investments in early intervention for disadvantaged children 

will reduce school failure, want to know if the programs are effective. While researchers and 

advocates may wonder why the outcomes of national evaluations involving assessments of 

children would not be suffi cient to address these questions, all politics is local and legislators 

respond best to the evidence found closest to home. Researchers are therefore in the position 

of being asked to address the policymakers’ “need to know.”

4. Holding National, State, and Local Policies Accountable

Another reason to support readiness assessments is to obtain benchmark data on the status 

of young children, state-by-state, county-by-county. The data can help determine whether 

the status of school readiness is improving and how it compares to the status of children in 

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A Risk Management Approach to 

Readiness Assessment: Lessons from Florida

other states and localities. Annual profi les, such as the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids 

Count, track important child-health outcome indicators such as low birth weight, infant , track important child-health outcome indicators such as low birth weight, infant 

mortality, and immunizations. Kids Count Kids Count also tracks fourth-grade reading and math skills. also tracks fourth-grade reading and math skills. 

However, for benchmarks between infancy and the mid-point of elementary school, Kids 

Count and other progress reports are generally forced to rely on process indicators (e.g., and other progress reports are generally forced to rely on process indicators (e.g., 

percentage of children enrolled in early education and care programs, accreditation status, 

etc.). The addition of school readiness outcome measures, assuming they can be agreed 

upon and administered reliably, would provide a missing link between maternal and childhealth outcome indicators and mid-elementary school-age indicators. In a recent article, 

Shepard et al. (2001) state that it is possible to develop such measures beginning at age fi ve 

as part of a comprehensive early childhood system to monitor trends. The combination of 

demographic information, outcome indicators, and process measures across the age span 

of children would be a powerful tool to hold policies—and policymakers—accountable.

Risks of Readiness Assessment

While there are many potential benefi ts associated with readiness assessment, there are 

just as many risks. Reasons for caution range from the unintended consequence 

of drawing inappropriate conclusions from misleading data, to diverting already 

scarce resources from program expansion and improvement to assessment, to 

denying children access to kindergarten, to punishing early childhood programs 

for serving the most disadvantaged children.

1. Drawing inappropriate conclusions from misleading data

The clearest risk associated with readiness assessment is simply that the data 

released for accountability purposes will be improperly gathered and used to 

draw inappropriate conclusions. Examples of misuse of school readiness data 

already exist and perhaps offer the best illustration of the need for assessment and 

evaluation experts to get involved in readiness assessment (i.e., to improve it). 

According to a recent survey by Saluja et al. (2000), 13 states currently collect readiness 

data, but only a few require school districts to use the same, much less a standardized, 

instrument. There is no guarantee, however, that states allowing localities to use different 

instruments will not analyze, report, and use the data as if it were based on the same 

instrument. In 1996, for example, Florida, as part of a broader school accountability 

initiative, began collecting data on school readiness. Each school district was given a 16-

item checklist, and kindergarten teachers were asked to assess readiness during the fi rst 

three weeks of school. To be considered “ready,” a child must score 75% or better on the 

checklist items. Each school district was allowed to select its own method for measuring the 

items on the list. The 67 districts therefore chose a variety of instruments—Brigance, the 

Child Observation Record, the DIAL-R, locally developed instruments, or the checklist 

itself, which was not designed to be a screening instrument. Most districts were not able 

to train the teachers in how to administer the instruments selected. Despite the obvious 

fl aws in the process, school districts had to dutifully report the results each year to the 

Department of Education. A summary of the readiness scores by district was then released 

to the legislature, to program evaluation staff in the Governor’s offi ce, and to anyone else 

upon request. Information indicating the variety of instruments used to measure readiness 

was rarely, if ever, included in the summaries regarding the readiness results. 

Further compounding the above problems in the readiness data, the state began using 

the scores to assess the effectiveness of subsidized childcare. Several years ago, as a part of 

a new performance-based approach to budgeting, the state set a requirement that at least 

80% of children enrolled in state- and federally-funded care must be “ready” for school. 

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Risks of readiness assessment

Inappropriate conclusions

Diversion of scarce resources

Denying children access to 

kindergarten

Punishing programs 

for serving the most 

disadvantaged children
A Risk Management Approach to 

Readiness Assessment: Lessons from Florida

The ultimate purpose of setting the standard for the outcome measure would be to use 

the information for performance-based budgeting. To satisfy the request for information, 

readiness scores for children entering kindergarten were matched with the database for 

children previously enrolled in subsidized childcare. Children’s readiness status was then 

further analyzed by the type of subsidized care in which they had been enrolled—informal 

care, voucher or contracted family childcare, or voucher or contracted center care.

Fortunately, this story has a happy ending. To this author’s knowledge, the above data 

from locally selected instruments were never used for performance-based budgeting 

purposes or for any other high-stakes purpose. With the passage of Florida’s School 

Readiness Act in 1999, the state mandated the development of a uniform assessment 

for all children entering kindergarten. (Although the statute uses the term “uniform 

screening,” the purpose is not only to identify children with possible developmental delay 

but also to assess the broader “school readiness” of entering kindergartners in the areas of 

health, cognitive, social and emotional, and language development.) Funding has been 

made available to purchase the assessment materials statewide and to train teachers in the 

use of the materials. The Florida Department of Education has clearly articulated that 

there are problems with the old system of measuring readiness, including the reliability 

and validity of the locally selected instruments, with inconsistencies in administration, 

and with inappropriate use of reported data. 

Let us suppose, however, that the above school readiness data had been used for 

performance-based budgeting purposes. The following are just a few of the conclusions a 

reader might draw from the summaries since 1996 of school district data based on locally 

selected instruments: 

The readiness status of children in Florida ranges dramatically, from as 

low as 41.3% “ready” in one county to as high as 95.8% in another 

(1996–1997 survey).

In some of the poorest counties in the state, with the lowest levels of maternal 

and child health and the highest dropout rates, nearly all children nevertheless 

enter school ready to learn (all surveys since 1996–1997).

Informal subsidized care is the superior form of care, based on the data that 

100% of the children who received state-subsidized informal care were ready 

for school in 22 counties (no matter that in many of these counties only one or 

two children were actually receiving subsidized informal care, 1999–2000 school 

readiness data).

In summary, the data from the locally selected instruments were not comparable across 

districts, were frequently not based on reliable and valid instruments, and in many cases were 

not collected from a large enough group of children from which to draw any conclusions. To 

use the above data for purposes of performance-based budgeting would be a disservice to the 

programs, the children enrolled, and the taxpayers. 

2. Diverting resources from program expansion and improvement 

 to assessment

Even if readiness assessments are well designed and used appropriately, there is some 

concern that the cost of the assessment(s) will absorb already scarce resources for expansion 

and improvement of early childhood services. The per-child cost of the assessment battery, 

including administration, in national studies such as FACES or ECLS-K (Early Childhood 

Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten Class of 1998–1999) is more than $400 per year. 

While this is a manageable expenditure for a sub-sample, it would probably be excessive 

if applied to every child enrolled in publicly funded school readiness programs (i.e., more 

than 15% of the expenditure for the program in many states). Even when the assessment 

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A Risk Management Approach to 

Readiness Assessment: Lessons from Florida

is limited to a simple developmental screening component, there is also the issue of time 

burden placed on the assessors, particularly if they are teachers. Given teacher turnover, 

there is the need for ongoing training. As stated above, teachers benefi t from involvement 

in the screening of the children in their charge because they gather knowledge that enables 

them to improve the instruction for the child. But clearly there is a limit to how much 

time teachers will be able—and willing—to divert to assessment from other important 

classroom responsibilities.

There is also the very real possibility that state legislatures will use readiness assessments 

as an excuse not to fi nance program expansion or improvement until the results of the 

assessment are available. The Florida School Readiness statute, for example, provides for 

coalition incentive grants for county coalitions that can prove they are improving the 

school readiness of the children in their service area. In the 2000–2001 legislative session, 

leaders made clear that they were awaiting the outcome of the school readiness data before 

providing signifi cant new funds for program improvement. Given the time required to 

implement a responsible assessment system, children may have to wait several years until 

the outcome data are in to support program improvements. There may also be a tendency 

to infl ate the scores if they are tied to fi nancial rewards for programs.

3. Denying children placement in kindergarten

Another concern is that readiness assessments will be used for denying children entrance 

to kindergarten, or that they will be used for requiring children to complete an extra 

year of school between kindergarten and fi rst grade. While 26 states once conducted 

readiness screening or testing, with several states using the results to delay school entry, 

most states have now discontinued the practice (Shepard, Taylor, & Kagan, 1996; Saluja 

et al., 2000). There is recognition that young children are diffi cult to assess and that the 

assessment results are therefore not suffi ciently reliable to justify denying any child the 

benefi t of a year of publicly fi nanced education. Nevertheless, pendulums can swing both 

ways. Despite initial recommendations by the Florida Partnership for School Readiness 

that kindergarten assessment scores only be reported in aggregate to the state, it was later 

determined that the scores would be part of a student’s record. Furthermore, once the 

teacher knows a child’s performance on an assessment, he or she will be armed with the 

information to recommend retention in kindergarten. 

4. Punishing programs for serving the most disadvantaged children

Finally, there is great concern that using readiness assessments for accountability purposes 

will inadvertently punish the programs that serve the most disadvantaged children, or, put 

another way, discourage publicly funded early childhood programs from serving children 

who most benefi t from being in the programs. For example, if a program’s level of state 

funding were determined by readiness outcomes, the program might accept fewer children 

with special needs. This is a very real possibility if preschool and other early childhood 

programs are evaluated solely on the basis of exit scores from preschool programs and/or 

entry scores in kindergarten, as opposed to the learning gains children make from entry 

into preschool programs until entry in kindergarten. 

Two states currently involved in the development of assessment systems seem to be well 

aware of the danger. Ohio, which has been tracking Indicators for Success since 1997 for 

25,000 children using Galileo software, is including entrance as well as exit data from Head 

Start and other early childhood programs. Similarly, Florida’s legislation calls for both preand post-assessment of children in publicly funded preschools. Florida’s legislation also calls 

for a longitudinal evaluation to track the performance of children through third grade who 

have been enrolled in early childhood programs and those who have not. Nevertheless, 

the proof will be in the implementation. The 2001 Florida Legislature provided the funds 

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A Risk Management Approach to 

Readiness Assessment: Lessons from Florida

necessary to implement the uniform kindergarten assessment (again, in the Florida law, 

this is called a “uniform screening”) but not those needed for the longitudinal study. 

Policymakers fi nd it diffi cult to understand why the uniform kindergarten assessment, with 

scores tracked back to the early childhood program in which the child was enrolled, cannot 

substitute for the longitudinal evaluation. Once the kindergarten assessment scores are 

released to the public, they will take on a life of their own.

A Risk Management Approach to 

Readiness Assessment

Given the potential benefi ts of school readiness assessment, how can states 

minimize the associated risks? Several strategies will be proposed to help 

maximize the potential benefi ts of readiness assessment and to minimize the 

risks. These include: (1) involving child development specialists and stakeholders 

in the planning process, (2) developing a set of principles for the assessment 

system, (3) clarifying that no one instrument will fi t all the purposes of 

assessment, (4) articulating the costs of a responsible assessment system, (5) 

clarifying the procurement process, (6) releasing readiness data in conjunction 

with program quality and demographic data, and (7) making the case for state 

participation in a national evaluation of program effectiveness.

1. Involving child development specialists and stakeholders in 

 the planning process

Perhaps the single most important step to maximize the benefi ts and limit the 

risks of school readiness assessment is to involve child development specialists 

and stakeholders in the planning of the system. Their guidance is not only 

needed in the design of the system but also to provide feedback at various points 

during the development and implementation of the system.

Enacted in May 1999, the Florida School Readiness Act required the newly created 

Florida Partnership for School Readiness “to prepare and submit to the State Board of 

Education a system for measuring school readiness” by July 2000, only six months after 

the Partnership staff of three full-time staff was actually assembled. The timeframe was 

formidable, and the stakes were high. First, the legislation called for a “uniform screening” 

of all children entering kindergarten, which would have the merit of providing a state 

mandate to identify any children with previously undetected developmental delays or 

health problems. The legislation also anticipated that the same screening tool would 

serve as a broader assessment to measure children’s readiness status in language, socialemotional, and cognitive development. Although the legislation required a longitudinal 

evaluation for purposes of determining program effectiveness, it also required the uniform 

assessment of children entering the kindergarten track back to the early care and education 

programs in which the children had been enrolled, suggesting that the sum of the 

individual child assessments and the program evaluation were to be one and the same. 

Faced with this challenge, the Partnership was fortunate to obtain the help of a lead 

consultant, Dr. Sharon Lynn Kagan, who serves as an advisor to the National Education 

Goals Panel. In addition, the Partnership assembled a state-level workgroup composed of 

child development specialists, early childhood leaders, assessment experts, kindergarten 

teachers, disabilities specialists, health professionals, and state agency offi cials. The 

workgroup then considered assessment strategies in a number of other states and had 

presentations from other consultants on such topics as the Desired Results Project from 

California, Work Sampling, and a comparison of the Head Start Performance Measures 

with school readiness assessment.

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19

Strategies to maximize benefi ts

and minimize risks:

Inclusive planning process

Guiding principles

Multiple instruments when 

there are multiple purposes 

for assessment

Costs articulated

Procurement process clarifi ed

Data released strategically

Advocation for multi-state 

evaluations
A Risk Management Approach to 

Readiness Assessment: Lessons from Florida

Without the help of this workgroup, the Partnership would not have had the time to 

develop a responsible proposal for the assessment system within the statutory timeframe. 

Furthermore, the status of the workgroup members, not to mention that of the nationally recognized lead consultant and the various presenters, added credibility to the 

recommendations. The workgroup, composed primarily of persons outside government, 

provided a defense against those who thought the assessment should indeed be used for 

purposes of delaying some children from entering kindergarten and establishing a special 

program for them. Finally, the workgroup developed a knowledge base to provide ongoing 

support for the proposed system. 

In retrospect, although the Florida workgroup on readiness assessment included 

kindergarten teachers and education agency representation, it would have been further 

enhanced by the inclusion of representatives of the school administrators’ association. 

Because schools would ultimately be charged with conducting Florida’s uniform 

assessment of children entering kindergarten, it would have been helpful to have their 

suggestions regarding the logistics of the screening implementation from the outset.

2. Developing a set of principles for the assessment system

The second most important step in a risk management approach to readiness assessment 

is to develop a set of guiding principles. With the help of the consultants, the workgroup 

proposed—and the Partnership Board later adopted—a list of principles that are 

summarized here as follows:

Principles Regarding Readiness

School readiness is the match between the condition of young children as they 

enter school and the capacity of schools to educate all children.

Standards, pedagogy, programs, and assessment instruments must be based 

on six domains of children’s development: (1) physical health, (2) approaches 

toward learning, (3) communication and language development, (4) social/

emotional development, (5) motor development, and (6) cognitive development 

and general knowledge.

Principles Regarding the Use of Data

Data collected from assessments should bring about benefi ts for the children 

from whom data is being collected.

Data collected from a uniform screening or assessment should not be used 

for high-stakes purposes such as the retention of individual children or the 

addition of a year before fi rst grade. The only criterion to be used for entry to 

kindergarten is chronological age.

Data on children’s status should be considered preliminary until the assessment 

system has been piloted and well implemented.

Principles Regarding the Assessment System

To accomplish the multiple intents specifi ed in Florida’s school readiness 

legislation, a system of assessment should be adopted for purposes of identifying 

children with potential developmental delays, instructional improvement, and 

program evaluation. It is understood that no one instrument can be used to 

meet all these needs. 

Principles Regarding Assessment Instruments and Process

All assessment instruments must be able to accommodate the linguistic needs 

of children in major language groups (meaning that the instruments will be

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A Risk Management Approach to 

Readiness Assessment: Lessons from Florida

available in English and Spanish and, for other languages, the school will 

attempt to identify an interpreter to assist with the screening).

All assessments should incorporate data from different sources over time.

The uniform screening or assessment should be brief, easy to administer, and 

affordable. Results should be reported in ways that parents and citizens can 

easily understand.

The principles developed more than a year ago have stood the test of time. They have 

provided a strong foundation from which the Partnership could make recommendations 

for the assessment system. For more detail on the principles, see the Final Report of 

the Workgroup on School Readiness Assessment, School Readiness in Florida: Strategies 

for Defi ning, Measuring, and Advancing Children’s School Success for Defi ning, Measuring, and Advancing Children’s School Success (Workgroup on School (Workgroup on School 

Readiness Assessment, 2000).

3. Clarifying that no one instrument will address all the purposes 

 of readiness assessment

From the standpoint of the experience in Florida, the single most important provision 

in the set of principles was the recognition that readiness assessment involves different 

purposes and the same instrument designed to meet one purpose (e.g., the uniform 

kindergarten assessment) is not adequate to meet another, such as program evaluation. 

As suggested at the outset of this paper, many policymakers use the terms “screening,” 

“assessment,” and “evaluation” interchangeably. By establishing the principle that there 

is no “one-size-fi ts-all” approach to assessment, the Florida workgroup set the stage for a 

comprehensive approach. The uniform assessment, including health and developmental 

screening, should be relatively brief, affordable, easy to administer, and already fi eld-tested. 

For purposes of instructional improvement, there should be an ongoing observational 

assessment. For purposes of accountability, the results of the kindergarten assessment 

provide benchmark or trend data on the status of children across counties or school 

districts. This type of data can provide general guidance to policymakers on the status 

of young children without evaluating the effectiveness of any one program. Finally, 

for purposes of program evaluation, only a more comprehensive battery of measures, 

including information on program quality based on standardized environmental ratings, 

information on the child’s family, and information on the child’s status upon entry into 

a preschool program as well as upon exit and again in third grade, would be suffi cient. 

It would not be feasible to use this battery on all children enrolled in publicly funded 

programs but only on a statistically valid sample.

4. Clarifying the costs of an assessment system

As new states take on the task of readiness assessment, they could benefi t greatly from 

advice on the costs of relative approaches. For example, one reason why policymakers 

may be tempted to try to use one instrument, such as a one-time screening, to satisfy 

multiple purposes of a readiness assessment system is that they may think this is the 

simplest, least expensive route to follow. However, establishing a system for the purpose of 

holding early childhood programs accountable requires assessing every child and may be 

the most expensive approach. First, there is the cost of the instrument itself, and because 

it is diffi cult to fi nd any single instrument that covers all the appropriate developmental 

domains, multiple investments may be required. Second, in order to attempt to ensure 

the reliability of the results, there is the ongoing investment required to train the assessors 

(most frequently teachers) in the use of the assessment instrument(s). Even the simplest 

assessment instruments frequently require one to three days of training (Niemeyer & 

Scott-Little, 2001). Observational instruments suitable for the purpose of improving 

instruction usually require more training and ongoing support for the teachers involved. 

Third, if the purpose is to evaluate program effectiveness, there is the cost (and diffi culty) 

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A Risk Management Approach to 

Readiness Assessment: Lessons from Florida

of establishing a data collection and management system that will reliably track the 

enrollment of all children, or even of those enrolled in publicly funded early care and 

education settings, through kindergarten. Because so much publicly funded childcare takes 

place in family childcare or exempt settings, this is a formidable task.

In summary, if the primary purpose is to assess program effectiveness, the cost of a 

universal kindergarten assessment, administered responsibly, may approach the cost of a 

longitudinal evaluation applied to all children. Before embarking on such an investment, 

policymakers need information on alternatives that may be less expensive, such as the 

use of uniform assessments for the purpose of obtaining benchmark or trend data, and 

a longitudinal evaluation of a much smaller sub-sample of children for the purpose of 

determining program effectiveness. With better information up front on the costs and 

considerations involved with the various types of assessment, states will be in a better 

position to address how best to hold programs accountable. 

5. Clarifying the procurement process

Before enacting legislation requiring readiness assessment, it is important to identify the 

funds available to pay for the assessment and to clarify which agency will be in charge 

of actually purchasing assessment instruments. Florida’s system would have been up and 

running in the summer of 2002 had there been clarity regarding which agency (i.e., the 

Partnership or the state’s Department of Education) would be in charge of conducting 

Request for Proposals to select the instruments and to proceed with the purchase.

6. Releasing readiness assessment data 

Once school readiness assessment data are available, it would be helpful if they could be 

released in conjunction with other data regarding program quality, family income, school 

dropout rates, etc. Releasing the readiness data as part of a package of information would 

help guard against simplistic interpretations and contribute to more thoughtful analysis. 

It is also important for researchers and state agency offi cials to communicate problems 

in data to program evaluators in the legislature and the Governor’s offi ce. When the 

Florida Partnership for School Readiness explained to evaluation staff in the legislature 

and the Governor’s offi ce the problems with the old system of locally selected instruments 

for school readiness measurement, they stopped using the data for program outcome 

measures, even though the new readiness assessment system was not yet in place. It is in 

no one’s interest to make important policy decisions based on obviously fl awed data.

7. Making the case for state participation in a national evaluation 

 of program effectiveness

For purposes of program accountability, it would be extremely helpful if each state 

were not in a position of reinventing the wheel. As stated above, all politics is local, and 

policymakers have a legitimate interest in obtaining local information regarding the 

effectiveness of state-funded programs. At the same time, the expertise and resources 

necessary to design and implement a comprehensive, longitudinal evaluation are beyond 

the capacity of many states. 

A suggested strategy would be for interested states to come together to participate in a 

joint evaluation. The best-case scenario would be a rigorous, independently implemented 

research study using standardized tools and specially trained assessors. Funded by a 

challenge grant from a federal agency and/or private foundations, the participating 

states might contribute at least a portion of the funds they would have spent on a state 

evaluation to participate in the multi-state study. With the advice of the participating 

states, the study team, coordinated by a neutral party, would determine the design, the 

instruments to be used, and the techniques for obtaining a comparable sample from each 

ASSESSING THE STATE OF STATE ASSESSMENTS

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A Risk Management Approach to 

Readiness Assessment: Lessons from Florida

state. They would also train the assessors. In this way, states would receive the state-specifi c 

information they need for accountability purposes, and they would also obtain data that 

were comparable across states. This approach would also maximize the benefi ts of the 

always limited funds states are able to invest in evaluation.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there are undeniably as many risks as benefi ts associated with school 

readiness assessment. However, with proper planning, it is possible to avoid many of the 

possible pitfalls. Given that some of the most feared consequences have occurred without 

the benefi t of assistance of child development and assessment specialists, it is prudent for 

them to help guide the readiness assessment process.

References

International Reading Association. (1986). Literacy, development and pre-fi rst grade: A 

joint statement of concerns about present practices in pre-fi rst grade reading instruction 

and recommendations for improvement. Childhood Education, 62(2), 110–111.

Meisels, S. J., & Atkins-Burnett, S. (2000). The elements of early childhood assessment. 

In J. P. Shonkoff & S. J. Meisels (Eds.), Handbook of early childhood intervention. 

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education. (2001). Table 

on Estimated Student Membership, Number of Teachers, Revenues, Expenditures, and 

Pupil/Teacher Ratios, for Public Elementary and Secondary Schools, by State, for Grades 

Prekindergarten Through 12: School Year 2000–01/Fiscal Year 2001, Washington, DC: 

U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov under Quick Tables under Quick Tables 

and Figures.

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

assessment instruments. Greensboro, NC: SERVE.

Saluja, G., Scott-Little, C., & Clifford, R. M. (2000). Readiness for school: A survey of 

state policies and defi nitions. Early Childhood Research and Practice, 2(2). 

Shepard, L., Kagan, S., & Wurtz, E. (2001). Principles and recommendations for early 

childhood assessments. The State Education Standard, 2(2), 5–12.

Shepard, L., Taylor, G. A., & Kagan, S. L. (1996). Trends in early childhood assessment 

policies and practices. Report prepared for the National Education Goals Panel. 

Washington, DC: National Education Goals Panel.

Workgroup on School Readiness Assessment, Final Report. (2000). School readiness in 

Florida: Strategies for defi ning, measuring, and advancing children’s school success. Adopted by 

the Florida Partnership for School Readiness, June 27, 2000. 

ASSESSING THE STATE OF STATE ASSESSMENTS

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Assessing 

School Readiness School Readiness

Assessing 

System Design 

Framework and Issues

Abstract

Starting school ready to learn has been a prominent goal for education since it was adopted 

by state and federal leaders in 1989. However, only recently have states begun to develop 

and implement ways of directly assessing school readiness. In this paper, a number of 

purposes for conducting readiness assessments are reviewed to assist readers in selecting their 

highest priorities. A clear, guiding purpose is essential in making good decisions about the 

assessment system. One such purpose is discussed in greater detail—informing the public 

and policymakers about the overall adequacy of society’s cumulative investments that prepare 

children for learning and development through their school experiences. Ten issues that 

should be considered in the development of the assessment system are raised and discussed to 

assist those who are guiding the development of readiness assessment systems.

Introduction

Every day parents of young children have the opportunity to observe their children and 

inform themselves about their children’s readiness for school. In the course of daily events, 

teachers, administrators, and the complement of other professionals who interact with young 

children observe the children and obtain information that can inform their judgments about 

the children’s readiness for school. Those with direct access to young children can use their 

natural sense-making abilities to assess the readiness of children for school. However, those 

without direct access are limited to assessing the children with whom they come in contact. 

Moreover, their observations may focus on characteristics of the children that are not directly 

related to school readiness and the informal judgments they form can be inaccurate. Others 

who need accurate information about school readiness and how it is changing, but interact 

with children on an infrequent basis, may have more deeply fallible methods for reaching 

conclusions about school readiness. 

Assessment systems are types of evaluation approaches which rely on systematic inquiry 

techniques to correct biases of our natural sense-making efforts and extend the reach of the 

observations that any individual can make (Mark, Henry, & Julnes, 2000). Like eyeglasses 

and microscopes, assessment systems are tools for assisted sense-making. Assessment systems 

are systematic inquiry methods that enable us to improve the accuracy of our descriptions 

ASSESSING THE STATE OF STATE ASSESSMENTS

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Gary T. Henry, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University
Assessing School Readiness:

System Design Framework and Issues

of the world around us: in this case, the accuracy of our descriptions of the readiness of 

children for school. 

Assessment systems for young children can be put into place for a variety of 

purposes. Traditionally, assessments of young children have emphasized purposes 

such as screening for disabilities, understanding the developmental progress of 

individual children, or providing feedback to teachers concerning the collective 

development of their students (Katz, 1997). While these purposes are important 

and need to be met, new purposes have come to the fore with the adoption of 

school readiness as a national goal (Shepard, Kagan, & Wurtz, 1998). Authors have begun 

to include information for monitoring trends, accountability, and program evaluation 

in the lists of purposes for readiness assessments (Shepard et al., 1998; Horm-Wingerd, 

Winter, & Plofchan, 2000). In defi ning purposes beyond the classroom or collection of 

individuals who are concerned about a particular child, these authors have expanded the 

list of legitimate and important purposes and opened up the dialogue for expanding the 

collection of systematic information at the state level. 

For the sake of clarity, I would like to focus on the evaluative and accountability purposes 

for readiness assessments. Mark et al. (2000) outline four purposes that can be served by 

evaluations such as state assessment systems:

1. Assessment of merit and worth

2. Organizational or program improvement

3. Oversight and compliance

4. Knowledge development

An evaluation that assesses merit and worth is an attempt to measure the overall value of a 

program, a policy, or a series of investments for the society. A primary reason to implement 

state readiness assessments is assessing the merit and worth of society’s overall investments, 

including policies, programs, and social supports, that prepare children for 

learning and development through their school experiences. Readiness assessments 

could inform overall judgments or conclusions about the cumulative investment 

in young children made by a state or the nation as a whole. In contrast to a 

program evaluation serving the same purpose, readiness assessment systems cannot 

easily inform judgments about the effects of a specifi c program. These systems 

change the level of focus from a single program to that of the constellation of 

programs, policies, and private investments that are made on behalf of children 

younger than six. Designing these systems requires us to make a cognitive leap 

from the level at which most evaluation efforts are focused (program effects) to 

a more abstract level (aggregated effects of public and private investments). The data from 

readiness assessment systems inform us about the benefi ts and consequences that result 

from the cumulative investments that are being made on behalf of young children, in a 

manner that is consistent with the theory of environmental or ecological infl uences on child 

development. Moreover, readiness assessments, which have much in common on this score 

with other state educational assessments and standardized tests, seek to describe rather than 

attribute cause (Mark et al., 2000). Although assessments can be used to estimate the effects 

of systemic reforms (Bloom, 1999; Henry & Rubenstein, 2002), it is very diffi cult to reach 

confi dent causal conclusions about the effectiveness of individual policies or programs from 

these assessment systems (Harkreader & Henry, 2000).

A primary evaluative purpose for assessing readiness is assessing the merit and worth of 

or informing conclusions about the overall investment in young children, and it is much 

less likely to serve any of the other three purposes. The public support for children under 

six is largely fragmented with no institution, organization, or program having the overall 

responsibility to ensure that no child falls behind. Therefore, readiness assessments cannot 

ASSESSING THE STATE OF STATE ASSESSMENTS

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Like eyeglasses and microscopes, 

assessment systems are tools for 

assisted sense-making.

Readiness assessments could 

inform overall judgments or 

conclusions about the cumulative 

investment in young children 

made by a state or the nation as 

a whole.
Assessing School Readiness:

System Design Framework and Issues

pinpoint organizational or programmatic defi ciencies for improvement purposes. At a 

strategic or policy level, readiness assessments can provide information on the results of 

gaps in the current pattern of investments. However, readiness assessments offer little 

organizational or program improvement guidance, because the information can point to 

problems or needs but not to specifi c means of addressing those needs. The fragmented 

and diffuse nature of the assignment of responsibilities for child development also limits 

the utility of readiness assessments to meet traditional accountability requirements 

including oversight and compliance. There are no readiness compliance standards from 

which to judge non-compliance in the implementation of policies, rules, or regulations 

that are most often the focus of oversight evaluations. Readiness assessments can provide 

data to enhance knowledge by developing classifi cation systems or testing theories, but 

these purposes are generally secondary in the view of evaluation sponsors. In spite of these 

limits on the use of the data, it is possible to justify the expenditures required for these 

systems on the basis of the need for information to assess the merit and worth of the 

investments made in young children. 

Judgments about the adequacy and types of investments in the development of young 

children can infl uence attitudes and actions in the following very important ways:

Increase the salience of children’s issues among the public

Provide the occasion for a focusing event (Kingdon, 1995), like the release 

of SAT scores or state educational assessments, that will raise the issue of the 

readiness of young children for school to the public agenda

Provide a rationale and focus for institutional actions and elite deliberations 

(committee hearings, public hearings, Blue Ribbon panels, etc.) that can 

increase the attention to and legitimize the place of children’s issues on the 

public agenda

Justify continued and increased expenditures to meet the developmental needs 

of young children

Assess gaps and needs for specifi c types of investment in young children

Set societal expectations for the performance of young children that would make 

them fully ready to benefi t from schooling

Establish a baseline and periodic evidence of the trends in the readiness of 

preschool-age children

Support efforts to build the civic will needed to adopt innovative policies for 

young children

Justify adoption of new policies when the conditions of young children do not 

meet societal expectations

Indeed, it is quite plausible that the lack of systematic, credible evidence about children’s 

readiness for school has inhibited the ability of children’s advocates and policy experts to 

infl uence widespread adoption of innovative children’s policies, especially at the state level. 

For example, after almost ten years of operation, Georgia stands alone in providing statesupported, full-day, developmentally oriented instruction and supervision for four-yearolds whose parents choose to enroll them (Cauthen, Knitzer, & Ripple, 2000). 

We can contrast this with K–12 education where assessments are commonplace and 

policy innovation diffusion has occurred from one state to another (Mintrom, 1997). 

The current round of education reform, which commenced in 1983 with the release 

of A Nation at Risk, has not abated for nearly 30 years. During this time, public and 

policymaker interest in education reform is fueled every few months by the release of 

state assessments, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and SAT scores 

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Assessing School Readiness:

System Design Framework and Issues

(even though the statewide averages provided by the College Board are potentially 

misleading, because the students who choose to take the test in each state represent a biased 

sample of high school students). The K–12 assessments bring the policy problems of the 

education system into clear focus in the minds of the public and policymakers. 

Evaluation research provides justifi cation for the solutions, such as targeting 

early elementary grades for lower class sizes in the STAR and WISE evaluations 

(Mosteller, 1995; Molnar, Smith, Zahorik, Plamer, Halbach, & Ehrle, 1999). 

While the problems at which these initiatives are directed are plausibly, but not 

unquestionably, better addressed by meeting the needs of younger children where 

solutions have also been shown to work (Reynolds, 2000; Reynolds, Temple, 

Robertson, & Mann, 2001; Peisner-Feinburg & Burchinal, 1997; Barnett, 1995; 

Schweinhart & Weikart, 1998), there are no comprehensive indicators of the 

discrepancy between performance and expectation prior to the third or fourth grade. Statelevel information about the readiness of children for school that provides a comprehensive 

(all children and aspects of readiness) and valid description of the well-being of young 

children is largely absent, with birth indicators providing most available indicators of child 

well-being for children under the age of six. This implies that there are no indicators to 

contrast with societal expectations for children’s readiness or to allow us to decide whether 

our investments in young children are paying off in the way that we as a society would 

expect until children reach the third or fourth grade. Therefore, we have no systematic 

evidence to provoke society to do more or to show us if doing more would increase 

readiness and reduce the problems associated with the lack of readiness.

School readiness assessments can provide a valuable service for society even if their only 

purpose is to assess the merit and worth of the constellation of investments being made 

on young children. Of course, it is possible to meet multiple needs, and some state 

assessment systems will be designed to cover a variety of purposes. However, to have the 

highest probability for success, the designers of state assessment systems should discipline 

themselves to the one or two purposes that have the highest priority (Mark et al., 

2000), one of which should be to inform overall judgments about the pattern of public, 

private, and social investments in young children. It is possible that other purposes will 

be accomplished in the process, and during the design phase, it is possible to consider 

tweaking the systems to take another purpose into account. However, developing a clear 

sense of priorities offers the best chance for the system to realize its purpose.

Having a clearly defi ned purpose will provide those designing and implementing readiness 

assessment systems with the fi rst-order criterion for making decisions about the issues 

that must be confronted in the process. The following ten issues presented below will be 

addressed in the design phase of the development of the assessment:

1. Specifying the dimensions of school readiness

2. Establishing the criteria for choice of measures

3. Determining the capacity for conducting the assessments

4. Establishing the study population

5. Measuring error and sample-size trade-off

6. Calibrating across measurement instruments

7. Conducting matrix sampling

8. Identifying local options for additional measures or increasing sample sizes

9. Determining human participant procedures

10. Planning for secondary purposes

In the paper, I hope to focus on each of these in turn to stimulate discussion about 

designing readiness assessment systems. However, in the design phase, it is often necessary 

to circle back to ensure that in addressing a later issue, the previous decisions have not 

been undone.

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The K–12 assessments bring 

the policy problems of the 

education system into clear focus 

in the minds of the public and 

policymakers.
Assessing School Readiness:

System Design Framework and Issues

1. Specifying the dimensions of school readiness

School readiness is a composite of many attributes as Shepard et al. (1998) emphasize 

in their principles and recommendations to the National Education Goals Panel. Of 

course, readiness includes academically oriented measures, such as cognitive abilities and 

language development, and also indicators of social, emotional, and physical well-being. 

The specifi c list of instruments, secondary data sources, and methods of administration 

will not be addressed in this paper. During the design phase, when precisely specifying the 

dimensions to be included in the assessment of school readiness, it is important to decide 

whether an overall index of “readiness” will be needed. 

If one of the overarching purposes is to inform the public and policymakers about 

the results of the cumulative investments in children, dramatic and easily understood 

measures will capture the greatest attention (Kingdon, 1995; Hilgartner & Bosk, 1988). 

Collapsing the measures into a single index provides an overall picture and avoids the 

“on the one hand, on the other hand” equivocation. Culturally, Americans, who are 

busy with making a living and their own interests, are prone to want simple score cards 

and ratings that capture their attention and don’t require much time to understand. A 

single, bold assessment of school readiness may capture more public interest, and much 

research supports the idea that what the public considers important receives attention on 

the public agenda (Monroe, 1998; Page & Shapiro, 1993). The design phase is the time 

for reconciling the need for a broad range of indicators to help experts understand school 

readiness and the need for simplicity and clarity in reporting, if the issue is to receive some 

of the “surplus compassion” of the public (Hilgartner & Bosk, 1988). However, some 

states choose to report results for statewide assessments separately, for example, reporting 

reading, math, science, and social studies for the third grade with no attempt to combine 

them. The salient point is that this aspect of reporting has many ramifi cations that will 

affect the design of the assessment.

2. Establishing the criteria for choice of measures

School readiness is both a goal in and of itself and a means for furthering other goals. The 

lists of measures used in the North Carolina Readiness Assessment and the Georgia Early 

Childcare Study provide intrinsically meaningful indicators. However, the public—and 

especially journalists—are constantly searching for the implications of these indicators. If 

we improve school readiness scores, will third-grade test scores rise? Will dropout rates go 

down? Will we have a more educated workforce? In the selection of specifi c dimensions 

and measures, the predictive validity or ability of the measures to accurately predict future 

consequences for children should be considered. To the extent possible, we should be 

prepared to provide research-based statements about the probable consequences of low 

scores on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test or the Social Skills Rating System. For 

example, in the development of K–12 indicator systems, the percentage of students who 

are two or more years over age in the eighth grade (retained twice) is often used and 

justifi ed as the best predictor of dropout. In making choices between measures within 

dimensions and the attention given to any single dimension, the criteria of predictive 

validity should be considered, along with more standard criteria of reliability and other 

forms of validity (Shepard et al., 1998; Gilliam & Zigler, 2000).

3. Determining the capacity for conducting the assessments

It is probable that the limiting conditions for conducting readiness assessments are the 

capacity to train assessors, manage the logistics, implement appropriate human participant 

protocols, and collect valid and accurate assessments. All of these are made more diffi cult 

because of the issue of timing and naturally occurring development. If the assessments 

are carried out over several months, it is not clear what they represent. In Georgia, for 

example, over 100,000 children enroll in kindergarten in about 800 public and 200 

ASSESSING THE STATE OF STATE ASSESSMENTS

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Assessing School Readiness:

System Design Framework and Issues

private schools. It is nearly impossible to imagine having the capacity to directly assess the 

population of fi ve-year-olds by anyone other than teachers or, if large amounts of missing 

data can be tolerated, parents. Developments in using teachers as raters (Meisels et al., 

2001) and the use of individual sampling and matrix sampling can reduce the strain on 

the capacity for fi nding, hiring, training, and managing assessors to do the fi eld work. 

However, each time a layer of sophistication is added to the design (several of which are 

discussed in the next sections), the capacity to manage the logistics must be carefully 

examined. The trade-off between comprehensiveness and obtaining assessments that are 

valid, accurate, and reliable must be constantly assessed and reassessed when decisions are 

made about managing the assessment process.

4. Establishing the study population

Clearly, conducting an assessment to estimate the extent to which children are ready to be 

successful in school involves assessing children at the beginning of their involvement with 

school. Whether the best approach is to assess fi ve-year-olds starting kindergarten or sixyear-olds starting fi rst grade could be debated. In the recommendations to the National 

Education Goals Panel, Shepard et al. (1998) frame the issue of determining the study 

population pragmatically rather than ideologically. If kindergarten is the institutional base 

from which the study population is selected, what should be done about the children who 

do not attend public kindergarten? If fi rst grade is the institutional base for the assessment, 

hasn’t the kindergarten experience blurred the effects of preschool and school, since 

kindergarten has become nearly ubiquitous? 

While the assessment of kindergartners raises methodological challenges for evaluating the 

investment in young children within a state, the design team must rule out the beginning 

of kindergarten as the point at which the assessments should occur. An important 

advantage of this choice is to confront the dearth of data on children prior to entering 

public education. Interpretation of the data will be forever murky if the assessment is 

staged at the beginning of fi rst grade. It may also be tempting to consider assessments 

that fall throughout the kindergarten year. Capacity considerations (discussed later) and 

supporting instructional purposes (for example, informing the kindergarten teacher 

about developmental objectives or providing the teacher with direct information on 

the development of each child in the class) may cause the consideration of delayed or 

phased assessments. Again, the interpretations are likely to be made more diffi cult and 

less conclusive as a result. Certainly, it can be argued that the children are no worse off 

during the kindergarten year or at the beginning of the fi rst-grade year than they were at 

the beginning of kindergarten. The cost of clarity in interpretation, especially in providing 

easily digestible information to the public, may be too high.

One additional issue to consider if kindergarten is chosen is the inclusion or exclusion of 

repeaters. These children are not beginning their school experiences. Their inclusion would 

affect the interpretation of the data. Yet, it is standard practice for educational assessments 

during elementary school to include students who have been retained in the grade.

5. Measuring error and sample-size trade-off

In selecting measures, instruments, and methods of administration, there is an inherent 

relationship between the reliability of the instrument as administered and the sample sizes 

necessary to produce the same sampling error. For example, some instruments have a 

standard deviation of 1. To produce an estimate of the study population’s value on such 

an instrument, a sample size of 800 would yield a standard error of .035, which would 

yield a confi dence interval of +/- .070, or less than a tenth of a point on the scale. For an 

alternative instrument that is less reliable (or is being administered under conditions that 

reduce its reliability) with a standard deviation of 5, a sample of 8,000 would be required 

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Assessing School Readiness:

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to yield the same overall standard error and confi dence intervals. In other words, the 

relationship between sample size and standard error is non-linear as shown by this case 

where the standard deviation increased by only fi ve times, but the sample sizes needed to 

maintain a constant standard error increased by ten times. In other words, small samples 

may be suffi cient with highly reliable instruments, but population or large samples may be 

assessed with much less reliable instruments and have the same degree of precision of the 

estimates. Therefore, if teacher ratings are less reliable, it may be possible to compensate 

by obtaining ratings on a larger sample of children. It should be noted that this only 

applies to precision and does not include bias as a source of error.

6. Calibrating across measurement instruments

In the design of readiness assessment systems, it may be useful to consider a tiered plan 

for the administration of instruments that would embed a tightly controlled study of a 

relatively small sample of children within a larger assessment of a larger sample or the 

entire study population (see Schweinhart’s chapter in this volume for an example of 

a tiered approach to program evaluation). The larger assessment could use much less 

expensive instruments and less precise measures, which might have several positive side 

effects, such as acquainting teachers and parents with highly important dimensions 

of children’s readiness. The tightly controlled study could be the source for all of the 

indicators of readiness that are published. The multiple sources of data on the same 

child may enable researchers to conduct calibration studies and test for bias in lower 

cost assessments by either parents or teachers. This type of design has large potential for 

informing teachers and parents about the most salient characteristics of child development 

and providing some clues as to biases that routinely occur in making judgments.

7. Conducting matrix sampling

Matrix sampling is a well-established assessment procedure that randomly assigns some of 

the assessment items to one group of children and other items to other groups of children. 

All items are included and can be reported on, but no child has to respond to all of them. 

Matrix sampling has been recommended by the Goal 1 Early Childhood Assessment 

Resource Group (Shepard et al., 1998) as a safeguard against using the data to make 

individual decisions about children and overburdening any individual child. Frequently 

in K–12 assessment systems, matrix sampling has been replaced because it means that 

comprehensive information about specifi c children is not available to inform parents and 

teachers. While reporting information on individual children may not be the purpose 

driving the assessment system, it is important to understand and make conscious decisions 

about matrix sampling and its limitations. Of course, sampling students would have some 

of the same safeguards as matrix sampling, although not to the same extent, and some of 

the same limitations.

There is one other issue that is raised by matrix sampling. Similar to the National 

Assessment of Educational Progress, it might be useful to develop a procedure to 

categorize children’s developmental progress at specifi c steps along the continua of 

readiness. NAEP uses the label profi cient, and many states use the label competent in their 

assessments to identify students who are judged to meet established performance criteria. 

It may be preferable to have an aggregate indicator of readiness based on the estimate of 

the number of children who are “ready to be successful” in school or some other way of 

demarking readiness. If this type of aggregation poses too high a risk for young children 

that cannot be addressed by human participant protections, then imposing technical 

impediments, such as matrix sampling, should be considered. Moreover, matrix sampling 

procedures do not eliminate the possibility of estimates of the number of children entering 

school fully ready for success in school. As Shepard et al. (1998) note, NAEP uses a form 

of matrix sampling, but the NAEP assessments are uni-dimensional (reading or math, not 

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Assessing School Readiness:

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both). Similar estimates can be constructed from carefully designed, inter-linked matrix 

samples, but they are more complex when the assessments cover multiple dimensions, 

such as the fi ve covered in the National Education Goals Panel report (Shepard et al., 

1998). A risk-benefi t discussion relative to this issue should be a part of the design process 

and aired with key decision-makers.

8. Identifying local options for additional measures or increasing sample sizes

Assessments of readiness that are being conducted at the state level are usually concerned 

with accurate estimates for the entire state or perhaps for a few regions within the state. 

For the purpose of assessing the merit and worth of the public, private, and social 

investments in young children to gain leverage on the policy agenda, statewide estimates 

are likely to be suffi cient. However, at the city and county levels, policymakers and policy 

advocates may need more information relevant to their specifi c sub-state jurisdiction. In 

addition, some counties or school districts want to have additional measures of school 

readiness for their own purposes. Once again, these requests must be evaluated using 

capacity and risk as a part of the decision making. Serving as many needs for information 

as possible provides the most stable base for maintaining the system over the years. 

However, inaccurate information or misuse of the data to assign children to inappropriate 

programs or withhold services can undermine an otherwise effective assessment system. 

9. Determining human participant procedures

The importance of human participant procedures and the applicability in almost all 

situations where risk could be involved has increased in recent years. While the concern 

of early childhood specialists for misuse of data has been at the forefront for many 

years, K–12 assessment systems are often developed and implemented without explicitly 

considering these procedures as potential safeguards. Independent reviews are important 

to ensure that human participants are adequately protected. Active, informed consent 

(opt-in) or passive, informed consent (opt-out) of parents may be deemed appropriate. 

Furthermore, the consent may constitute a binding limitation on how the data could be 

used. These procedures may strengthen the protections for young children who participate 

in the assessments.

10. Planning for secondary purposes

If the only purpose for assessing school readiness is to inform judgments about the 

public, private, and social investments in children under age six, then utilizing traditional 

sampling procedures to select a subset of children and matrix sampling can substantially 

lower costs. These techniques may be used if program improvement purposes are being 

added to the primary purpose. However, if instructional purposes or informing parents 

about their child’s development are added, then the sampling methods should be avoided. 

It is possible to use matrix sampling and still provide information to teachers about 

the development of children, in the aggregate, coming into their schools. However, the 

sampling procedures must then include students in every school and include them in 

suffi cient numbers to develop a reasonably accurate estimate for the school. This will 

require more children—perhaps more children than are present in most schools—if matrix 

sampling is used.

If organizational and program improvement purposes are considered, an important factor 

is whether the objective is to estimate outcomes for children who have participated in a 

particular program or to determine need for the program’s services among the population 

that was unserved. The fi rst calls for a suffi cient sample size of program participants 

and careful consideration about whether the non-participants who are included in the 

assessment could be a reasonable “comparison” group. Much published research relies 

on (Reynolds, 2000) or advocates (Gilliam & Zigler, 2000) post hoc, constructed 

comparison groups. However, the reasonableness of this depends entirely on the initial 

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Assessing School Readiness:

System Design Framework and Issues

differences between children who participated in the program and those who did not. 

For geographically limited, means-tested programs, such as the Chicago Parent Child 

Centers (Reynolds, 2000), comparison groups of this type are quite reasonable, although 

not optimal. With a statewide pre-kindergarten program, the group of children whose 

parents chose not to send them to pre-k but who are included in the readiness assessment 

may be very different and any comparisons too biased by those differences to be usable. 

A second purpose, program improvement, which is more akin to a needs assessment than 

an outcome evaluation, would not be compromised by selection bias in the same way, 

but it will still be very important to be able to disaggregate the readiness assessment data 

by those who received and those who did not receive the services. This is often more 

diffi cult than it sounds, especially with children who may have used several different 

types of preschool or childcare during the previous year. If it can be assembled accurately, 

information about program coverage could also serve oversight purposes. Knowledgedevelopment purposes could raise any number of design issues, but they are very specifi c 

to the research question being pursued and, therefore, too numerous to provide any 

general guidelines in this paper.

Conclusion

Assessment systems are costly in terms of the funds required to develop and maintain 

the system and the opportunity costs to children, teachers, and others. It is easy to 

recognize the need for assessing school readiness and to justify that the public should 

absorb these costs, but system designers and implementers must be careful stewards of 

the public’s coffers. A prerequisite for developing these systems is a clear statement of 

purpose. This paper has detailed the need for assessing the merit and worth of private, 

public, and social investments in young children. This would fi ll a gap that currently 

exists between indicators that are measured at birth that relate to child development and 

test scores from early years of elementary school. Measures of readiness taken at entry to 

school can indicate the need for the types of solutions that have been shown to benefi t 

young children. Policy research indicates that problems and solutions must travel in 

tandem (Kingdon, 1995) if they are to fi nd a place on the policy agenda and be enacted. 

Assessments of the readiness of young children for school can answer questions about why 

we need to enact benefi cial policies and programs and, ultimately, to contribute to the 

well-being of children.

It seems that human nature leads us to see the potential in things we believe to be 

important and to begin to add purposes to the list of things a readiness assessment system 

should be designed to do. Potential is a great burden. All too often, trying to serve too 

many purposes leads to serving none. However, not meeting purposes that are highly 

valued by the public, professionals, or policymakers can derail assessment systems. In the 

K–12 arena, many norm-referenced tests have been replaced because they do not provide 

information specifi c to a state’s standards. In addition, assessments that relied on matrix 

samples have been replaced because they do not provide information on individual students 

for teachers and parents. Obtaining input from the public and policymakers in ways in 

which they can understand the trade-off implied by adding a purpose or eliminating one, 

and doing so in advance, can reduce second guessing after the information is reported and 

it becomes evident that all potential purposes have not been fulfi lled. Systematic evidence 

about the most valued aspects of an assessment system (Mark, Henry, & Julnes, 2000) may 

be used to obtain guidance on the most highly valued purposes and high-priority outcomes 

as well. If an inquiry about the value of various purposes is attempted, it is extremely 

important to provide descriptions that include cost, testing time, and information use 

for likely alternative designs to get informed opinions. This may add time to the design 

process, but in the contentious halls of modern democracies, spending time to do this may 

contribute to the development of a readiness assessment system that lasts.

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Assessing School Readiness:

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Issues in Implementing a State 

Preschool Program Evaluation

Abstract

What are the challenges of state preschool evaluations? Lawrence Schweinhart addresses 

design and implementation issues encountered by the High/Scope Educational Research 

Foundation’s evaluation of the Michigan School Readiness Program. Presenting a range of 

practical issues, such as the cost of program evaluations, through more technically complex 

issues, such as validity and reliability associated with using teacher observation data, the 

paper shares program evaluation strategies that have been used in Michigan. Michigan’s tiered 

program evaluation strategy—with intensive data collected from children in a select group of 

programs, program-quality data and child-risk-factor data collected from all programs, and 

support for local evaluations—is described. 

Introduction

This paper is organized as a series of questions and answers on how to design and implement 

an evaluation of a state preschool program. It is based on the author’s experience in directing 

High/Scope’s multifaceted evaluation of the Michigan School Readiness Program (MSRP) 

and providing consultation for similar efforts. Working with the Michigan Department of 

Education (MDE), High/Scope Educational Research Foundation has been conducting 

an evaluation of MSRP since 1996. The program itself began at a few sites in 1985 and 

expanded statewide beginning in 1988. In 2001, we began an evaluation of a state funding 

initiative to expand part-day MSRP and Head Start programs to full day. This is one of the 

only proactive, fully publicly funded full-day early childhood program efforts in the U.S.

How can a state preschool program evaluation establish its internal and 

external validity?

The scientifi c worth of an evaluation depends on its internal and external validity. Internal 

validity builds on strong design and objective assessment to produce results that really 

mean what they seem to mean. External validity builds on solid sampling of programs, even 

participation of all local programs, to produce results that generalize or apply to all local 

programs in the state program.

A good way to deal with both internal and external validity is to have a multi-faceted evaluation 

that includes at least three components: (a) an intensive scientifi c evaluation, (b) extensive 

statewide collection of some data, and (c) technical support to grantees for local evaluations. 

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in Michigan

Lawrence J. Schweinhart, High/Scope Educational Research Foundation
Issues in Implementing a State 

Preschool Program Evaluation in Michigan Preschool Program Evaluation in Michigan

Issues in Implementing a State 

What is needed for an intensive scientifi c evaluation?

An intensive scientifi c evaluation should involve a comparison group and observational data 

collected by trained data collectors. It should compare a group of children who experience 

the preschool program to a comparison group of children like them who did not experience 

any preschool program. While an experimental design involving random assignment 

of children to program and comparison groups is ideal, quasi-experimental designs are 

probably more feasible. One practical approach, which we used in the Michigan evaluation, 

is to select comparison children at kindergarten entry who have the same background 

characteristics as the program group. 

Investment in the collection of observational data by trained data collectors strengthens the 

evaluation’s objectivity and ecological validity. Although teachers collect valid observational 

data (Schweinhart, Oden, & Jurkiewicz, 2000), their self-interest in evaluation of their 

own programs creates an apparent confl ict of interest for them as data collectors. For 

young children, observational data has much stronger ecological validity than do tests. 

Michigan early-childhood-assessment guidelines refl ect this priority, and our Michigan 

evaluation relies on observational data to the exclusion of tests in the preschool year. But 

tests, administered one-on-one by trained testers, do provide a precise objectivity lacking in 

observational data, and we have used them in other early childhood program evaluations.

The Michigan evaluation has tracked one cohort of children at half a dozen sites through 

fourth grade this year. During the 2000–2001 program year, we began collecting data 

on a new cohort in the children’s preschool year. The new cohort has only two sites, one 

urban and one rural. The intensive evaluation has found evidence of program effects on 

children’s development, school readiness, and subsequent school success. In particular, it 

found that only 11% of the program group was held back a grade as compared to 21% of 

the comparison group (Xiang & Schweinhart, 2001).

What data should be collected statewide?

The extensive statewide data collection should emulate the intensive scientifi c evaluation 

but must rely on what opportunities present themselves. It is desirable to collect statewide 

data on child and family background, program characteristics, and child outcomes. Child 

and family background is easiest to collect because some such information is required for 

enrollment (followed by program characteristics and, fi nally, child outcomes). 

In Michigan, we now annually collate two types of data statewide—on children’s risk 

factors and on program quality. To qualify for the program, children must have 2 of 25 

risk factors, designated and defi ned by MDE. Local program staff record all of children’s 

risk factors on optical mark forms and send them to High/Scope for collation by means 

of a scanner that reads optical marks. (Optical mark-reading technology is critical to 

inexpensive collation of statewide data.) Such data in 1998 indicated that 67% of MSRP 

children lived in low-income families, 42% lived in single-parent families, and 31% lived 

in families with a history of academic failure (Xiang, Schweinhart, Hohmann, Smith, 

Storer, & Oden, 2000).

In addition, local program staff assess their own programs using the High/Scope Program 

Quality Assessment. High/Scope developed this 72-item tool using the state standards, 

Head Start standards, and our own previous work. It has evidence of its reliability and 

validity. Staff either complete the items themselves or have others, such as administrators 

or fellow teachers, complete the items for them. They record the ratings on optical mark 

forms and send them to High/Scope for collation. From this base, High/Scope staff and 

MDE staff have worked closely to examine and revise the state’s reporting schedule to 

obtain information on variables important to understanding the program. Such data in 

1998 indicated high PQA scores in general (averaging 4.18 on a 5-point scale), but low 

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Issues in Implementing a State Preschool Program Evaluation in Michigan Preschool Program Evaluation in Michigan

Issues in Implementing a State 

scores (of 3 or less) for signifi cant percentages of respondents on certain items, such as 

professional organization affi liation (43%), time for child recall of activities (38%), and 

anecdotal note taking by staff (31%).

Although we do not yet collect statewide data on child outcomes in Michigan, we do have 

local program staff report on their local evaluations. Despite some improvement in recent 

years, only a minority of local grantees are reporting on child outcomes at all (Xiang et 

al., 2000), so we provide technical support to local grantees regarding child outcomes 

assessment and program evaluation.

What technical support for local evaluation should be provided to grantees?

A state preschool program evaluation needs to address the issue of providing technical 

support to grantees for local evaluations. As I said earlier, local evaluations have been a 

requirement of the Michigan School Readiness Program from the beginning, but the 

requirement was not enforced because it was obvious that programs could not meet it 

without technical support and MDE was not in a position to provide it. Three years 

ago, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation in Michigan provided us with a three-year grant to 

provide evaluation assistance to MSRP grantees. The fi rst year, we offered three types of 

workshops—a two-day workshop on observational assessment of children’s development, a 

two-day workshop on program quality assessment, and a one-day workshop on evaluation 

design. In the second year, we continued to offer variations of these workshops. In the 

third year, we focused more on providing consultation to local grantees in support of their 

evaluation efforts.

What should the training for assessment be? When and how is it best done?

Whether teachers or data collectors collect the data, they need to receive training in how 

to do it properly. The state and local MSRP evaluations involve data collected by data 

collectors and teachers. The principal data collection instruments are the High/Scope 

Program Quality Assessment (PQA) (High/Scope, 1998) and the High/Scope Child 

Observation Record (COR) (High/Scope, 1992). We provide two days of training to data 

collectors or teachers for either of these tools. The training involves practice with each 

process involved in data collection: observation, anecdotal note taking, identifying the 

items contained within the anecdote, and assigning the anecdote a level on each relevant 

item. We train data collectors to a standard of inter-observer agreement that we assess at 

the end of the training. We have not assessed the inter-observer agreement of teachers after 

training, except as part of designated studies, although a case can be made for doing so. 

We hire and pay data collectors. 

Teachers participate in training as grantees choose, with encouragement from High/Scope 

and MDE. We recommend that teachers receive training prior to using an instrument, 

but practical considerations come into play. For example, MDE required teachers to 

provide self-assessments on the PQA for two years before the W. K. Kellogg Foundation 

gave us the funding to offer PQA training at minimal cost. Although we recommend two 

days of training for the PQA and two days of training for the COR, teachers sometimes 

use either instrument with less than the recommended training. Some teachers learn how 

to use the instrument from the manual, a training CD-ROM, or other materials, and 

other teachers learn unassisted or with the assistance of a supervisor or other user.

Who should collect the data and what factors should be considered 

in making this decision?

In local evaluations, teachers are usually the data collectors because data collection can be 

built into their jobs, whereas trained data collectors are an extra program expense. Also, 

there is evidence that teachers can collect data that are more reliable and valid than the data 

collected by data collectors (Schweinhart et al., 2000). Teachers may have a self-interest as 

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Issues in Implementing a State 

Preschool Program Evaluation in Michigan Preschool Program Evaluation in Michigan

Issues in Implementing a State 

well as competing responsibilities, but their access to children’s behavior far exceeds the 

access of data collectors. With the COR, for example, teachers collect data from children 

over six weeks or more, while data collectors usually observe four children over three 

part-day sessions. Further, teachers can notice that certain data are missing and make midcourse corrections to obtain complete data, whereas data collectors’ missing data at the end 

of the three part-day sessions must remain missing data.

How should sites be included in decision making regarding the assessment 

and the data collection?

As with any project involving people, it is desirable to include program staff in decisions 

about the evaluation design and instrumentation. But once set, it is critical that everyone 

participates in the evaluation design and instrumentation. In Michigan, the intensive 

scientifi c evaluation had an advisory panel of MSRP staff from across the state who provided 

input and feedback on the design and instrumentation of the study. Once the design and 

instrumentation of such studies are established, however, participating sites must conform 

to the established design and instrumentation or cease to be a part of the evaluation. In 

fact, one site did not participate in the initial child outcomes evaluation because it insisted 

on using an instrument other than the COR, thereby eliminating the site from the child 

outcomes analysis. These same procedures apply to the full-day evaluation, except that the 

participating sites themselves are serving as a de facto advisory panel. 

In the statewide data collection, MDE requires sites to report data on risk factors 

and program quality with designated instrumentation. Local staff continues to have 

considerable discretion in the instrumentation and design of local evaluations. In the 

1999–2000 program year, only 44% of the sites even mentioned outcomes as part of their 

local evaluation reports to the state; however, this was up from 25% two years earlier.

What is the nature of public engagement, and what should it be?

The public needs to know more about the value of high-quality preschool programs for 

children at risk of school failure. Even policymakers and school administrators are not as 

informed as they ought to be in this regard. To the extent that the evaluation identifi es 

benefi ts of MSRP, we are committed to bringing these benefi ts and the program itself to 

the attention of the public, in general, and policymakers and school administrators, in 

particular. To the extent that the evaluation fails to identify program benefi ts or identifi es 

areas of program weakness, we are committed to bringing these fi ndings to the attention 

of program staff who can take steps to surmount the problems.

The evaluation has generated three annual reports that have served as the basis of 

public dissemination of the evaluation’s methods and fi ndings (Florian, Schweinhart, & 

Epstein, 1997; Xiang & Schweinhart, 2001; Xiang et al., 2000). Each annual report is 

accompanied by a brief executive summary or fact sheet for broader dissemination. We 

have made these materials available to local grantees and posted them on the Web. We 

have also targeted specifi c audiences for dissemination through their conferences or other 

meetings. Dissemination to MSRP and Head Start audiences has been well received, but 

dissemination to educators, policymakers, and the public through reporters has received 

mixed results. On the other hand, a little bit of success in such dissemination seems to 

go a long way. For example, for the last annual report, we worked with MDE’s public 

information offi cer to develop and disseminate a press release. In the course of doing so, 

he had to get it approved by the State Superintendent and send it to the Governor’s Offi ce 

to see if Governor Engler wanted to be involved in releasing it. Although the Governor did 

not pursue further involvement, the effort drew his and the Superintendent’s attention to 

the evaluation’s positive fi ndings. Not much press appeared to result from the effort, but 

these other valuable communications did take place.

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Issues in Implementing a State Preschool Program Evaluation in Michigan Preschool Program Evaluation in Michigan

Issues in Implementing a State 

Our communication with legislators has not been as direct as we had expected it would 

be. We thought we would be asked to testify for various legislative committees regarding 

annual appropriations for the program. That did not happen, but it seems likely that 

the annual reports and knowledge among policymakers of the positive evaluation have 

contributed to the steady increases in funding for the program. Indeed, from 1988–1989 

to 2000–2001, part-day MSRP funding increased almost six fold, from $15 million to 

$85.5 million. The evaluation surely did not cause this increase, but it did encourage it, 

whereas a negative evaluation would have raised a serious question about such expansion.

What are the costs of creating assessment systems? What are the comparative 

costs of one strategy over another? What is the most cost-effi cient way to 

design and administer systems? 

MDE has provided High/Scope $300,000 a year for the intensive scientifi c evaluation and 

statewide data collation and $225–240,000 a year for the full-day evaluation. The W. K. 

Kellogg Foundation provided $150,000 a year for the evaluation support to local grantees, 

but this level of funding met only part of the need. On the other hand, providing training 

in evaluation underscored the dearth of training in curriculum and program operation. 

These are only the visible costs of such evaluation efforts. Evaluation is intrinsic to program 

operation, so many of its costs are embedded within program operation costs. The success 

of our local grantee evaluation support effort was no doubt conditioned on the program 

requirement that MSRP teachers be certifi ed teachers with an early childhood endorsement. 

By the same token, the success of this effort was relative and clearly could have been greater. 

Although outcomes evaluation is now more common in local evaluations, it is not yet 

universally required as it ought to be. 

Such observations should be put in perspective, however. Preschool programs for at-risk 

children have much in common with kindergarten programs, both in the similar ages 

of children and in the fact that both were introduced into school systems that did not 

originally include them. Froebel invented the kindergarten in 1840 with religious and 

philosophical justifi cation, and today kindergarten is nearly universal in the U.S. In all 

those years, so far as I know, not a single experimental study has ever demonstrated the 

value of kindergarten. Some years ago, we worked with the South Carolina Department of 

Education to fi nd that children who went to kindergarten had higher fi rst-grade test scores 

than those who did not (Schweinhart & Barnett, 1984). However, this fi nding could have 

been due solely to better-off children going to kindergarten rather than kindergarten’s 

contribution to their development. Some studies have found mixed evidence that full-day 

kindergarten programs have stronger results than part-day programs (Rothenberg, 1995); 

these studies only underscore the lack of any studies establishing the worth of part-day 

kindergarten programs in the fi rst place.

We must conclude that our zeal for empirically proving the worth of preschool programs 

has taught policymakers to insist on evaluations that prove their worth. Without our 

efforts, policymakers might well accept preschool programs on their apparent merits 

without insistence on rigorous evidence of these merits. Ultimately, our efforts and their 

response grow from a cultural worry about whether organized educational programs are 

good for young children. Our evidence feeds this worry by showing that some programs 

contribute to children’s development while others do not. So, perhaps evaluation and 

preschool programs are meant for each other. If they are, though, evaluation is also 

meant for programs at kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school, and 

postsecondary institutions.

ASSESSING THE STATE OF STATE ASSESSMENTS

Perspectives on Assessing Young Children

41
Issues in Implementing a State 

Preschool Program Evaluation in Michigan Preschool Program Evaluation in Michigan

Issues in Implementing a State 

References

Florian, J. E., Schweinhart, L. J., & Epstein, A. S. (1997). Early returns: First year report of 

the Michigan School Readiness Program evaluation. Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope Educational 

Research Foundation.

High/Scope Educational Research Foundation. (1992). The High/Scope Child Observation 

Record for ages 21⁄2 to 6 Record for ages 21⁄2 to 6. Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope Press. . Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope Press.

High/Scope Educational Research Foundation. (1998). The High/Scope Program Quality 

Assessment: Pre-school version. Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope Press.

Rothenberg, D. (1995, May). Full-day kindergarten programs. ERIC Digest ERIC Digest, EDO-PS- , EDO-PS95-4. Retrieved from www.ericeece.org

Schweinhart, L. J., & Barnett, W. S. (1984). South Carolina’s early childhood programs are 

a good investment a good investment (Report to the Offi ce of the Governor of South Carolina). Ypsilanti, MI: (Report to the Office of the Governor of South Carolina). Ypsilanti, MI: 

High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, ERIC Document No. ED 252 273.

Schweinhart, L. J., Oden, S., & Jurkiewicz, T. (2000, June 28). Do teachers or observers 

see children’s development better? see children’s development better? Poster presented as part of the Head Start Quality Poster presented as part of the Head Start Quality

Research Consortium Symposium at Head Start’s Fifth National Research Conference, 

Washington, DC

Xiang, Z., & Schweinhart, L. J. (2001). Ready for success: Annual report of the Michigan 

School Readiness Program longitudinal evaluation. Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope Educational 

Research Foundation. Retrieved from www.highscope.org

Xiang, Z., Schweinhart, L. J., Hohmann, C., Smith, C., Storer, E., & Oden, S. (2000, 

February 28). Points of light: Third year report of the Michigan School Readiness Program 

evaluation. Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope Educational Research Foundation. Retrieved from 

www.highscope.org

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42
Instrumentation for State

Readiness Assessment: Readiness Assessment:

Instrumentation for State

Issues in Measuring 

Children’s Early Children’s Early

Issues in Measuring 

Development and Learning

Children’s Early 

Development and Learning

Children’s Early 

Abstract

How can we measure children’s readiness for success in school? This paper reviews important 

elements of what we are trying to measure (elements of readiness as a concept), the context 

within which we are measuring children’s readiness for success in school, and criteria for 

selecting instruments. The paper concludes by pointing out that readiness is a broad concept 

and in order to adequately assess children’s readiness for success in school, one must take 

into consideration the vast array of children’s experiences that have culminated in their 

“readiness” as they enter school.

Introduction

State systems for assessing children as they enter kindergarten are expanding rapidly. Ever 

since the nation’s governors created the National Education Goals Panel some 11 years 

ago, the fi rst goal, that “By the year 2000, all children in America will start school ready to 

learn,” has stimulated widespread discussion and debate and, even more, has led to action 

on many fronts. It seems as though each week sees more states entering the assessment 

arena, intent on determining whether their children are “ready to learn” when they come 

to kindergarten. Many of us are called on for advice by state administrators, school district 

evaluation staff, or funders. We get phone calls and e-mails with the plea: “We’re under the 

gun to produce some scores; what should we do? And by the way, we have to collect data in 

September” (the request having come in April or May, if that early). Among all the issues of 

design, implementation, and instrumentation that surround state decisions about readiness, 

instrumentation often includes the thorniest problems and is often the fi rst concern we hear 

about. So, what should we do, and where should we start?

I have to admit that I generally try to avoid giving concrete advice. As you will soon see, I 

continue that tradition in this paper. I have several reasons for taking this stance. Perhaps 

if I share them with you, we can, together, get a clearer picture of the substantial challenges 

facing those on the front lines who really must decide on the instruments and put some 

assessment procedures in place by Labor Day. First, however, I would like to return to the 

conceptual foundations of the assessment and instrumentation dilemmas. Thus, in the fi rst 

section of this paper I review what seem to be the most essential ingredients of a concept of 

readiness. Then, I want to consider the current educational and policy context, which differs 

in some important ways from the events swirling around the Goal One committee in the 

ASSESSING THE STATE OF STATE ASSESSMENTS

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43

John M. Love, Mathematica Policy Research
Instrumentation for State Readiness Assessment: 

Issues in Measuring Children’s Early Development and Learning

era that began these debates. A major difference is the contemporary emphasis on reading 

in the primary grades, and in this context, I want to remember the “basics.” In the third 

section of the paper, I address the most central dilemmas of instrumentation—what can 

we know about children’s readiness, and how can we choose among available instruments? 

Finally, I turn to a broader framework, one that I encourage us all to think about as we go 

about our tasks of designing, measuring, and interpreting school readiness assessments.

What Is Readiness?

The Goal One Technical Planning Group broke new ground by defi ning not 

only what the important dimensions of “readiness” are but also what conditions 

are critical for supporting those dimensions (Kagan, Moore, & Bredekamp, 

1995). The fi ve dimensions of early development and learning (physical and 

motor, social and emotional, approaches toward learning, language development, 

and cognition and general knowledge) have become widely accepted, in one form 

or another.1 Please see Attachment 1 for a summary of the fi ve dimensions. The 

three supporting conditions (having access to quality preschool programs, parents 

as children’s fi rst teachers, and appropriate nutrition and health care) have even 

been expanded upon by others in recent years.

Sam Meisels (1998) notes, as have others, that the term “readiness” describes 

a relationship rather than a particular quality or set of characteristics of the 

child. In other words, if two children have the same set of developmental 

skills, abilities, and attitudes, one could be considered “ready” for school and 

the other not, depending on the nature and expectations of the school that the child 

will be entering. This relativity becomes even more complex when we consider that 

different states, and perhaps counties and communities within states, may have different 

expectations. In fact, I have argued previously that the community context for readiness is 

a particularly important consideration. 

At some point, however, principle must give way to practicality. It is important to 

remember this relativity, but if we dwell on it, we will never move forward. I resolve this 

dilemma for myself by assuming that schools, at least in some general sense, are likely to 

have common expectations for the children who enter their kindergartens and fi rst grades. 

It would be important, however, to determine whether this assumption has any validity. I 

return to the interesting notion of the community context of readiness in a couple of pages.

The Current Policy Context

With the change in administrations, we have seen an increasing emphasis at the federal level 

on reading as the central challenge of elementary schools, and preparing children to learn to 

read as the major goal of kindergartens and programs that precede kindergarten—especially 

the year or two immediately preceding kindergarten, which we usually call “preschool.” 

I embrace these emphases but suggest here that the early childhood fi eld has yet to fully 

realize their implications for pre-kindergarten education, the myriad programs that 

preschool-age children experience in this country, and the assessment of school readiness.

The Centrality of Reading

Schools have always focused on reading instruction in the early elementary years. Today, 

that focus appears even greater, and concerns about “pre-reading” extend the discussion 

to preschool and earlier. The current emphases for elementary school curricula have 

important implications for readiness assessment. 

At the July 2001 White House Summit on Early Childhood Cognitive Development, 

Secretary Paige noted the possible chain of events set off by children who can’t read: 

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Readiness

Has fi ve dimensions

Depends on supporting

conditions

Is a relationship between 

the child’s characteristics, 

the supporting conditions, 

and the nature and 

expectations of the school
Instrumentation for State Readiness Assessment: 

Issues in Measuring Children’s Early Development and Learning

They can’t do homework, have diffi culty keeping up in other classes, are repeating grades, 

get misidentifi ed as learning disabled, and are shunted to special education classes. Often 

these kids ultimately drop out. Tommy Thompson added another dimension: “without 

reading skills, you can’t fi gure out a medical prescription, read a warning label, or keep 

up with news that could benefi t your health.” Russ Whitehurst, Assistant Secretary for 

Educational Research and Improvement, emphasized the role of “pre-reading skills,” while 

giving us a heads-up on assessment priorities: “Given the strong predictive relationship 

between pre-reading skills and later reading outcomes, screening children for pre-reading 

knowledge should become as routine as screening for problems in hearing and vision.” 

To Whitehurst, pre-reading skills include “the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that are 

precursors to children’s ability to read and write, and the environments that support those 

abilities.” This does not sound very far from the position of the Goal One Technical 

Planning Group.

The summit speakers did more than talk about the outcomes for children, however. 

Susan Neuman, the then Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education, 

emphasized the role of environmental stimulation. Similarly, Reid Lyon, NICHD’s Child 

Development and Behavior Branch Chief, in summarizing the conference themes, noted, 

“School readiness concepts are best learned when provided in safe environments where 

the kids feel emotionally secure and where they can develop close relationships with other 

children and caring adults.” He said that getting children ready to read is critical because 

of the strong “link between what preschool kids know about words, sounds, letters, 

and print, and later academic performance.” However, what most intrigued me about 

his comments, which I did not see refl ected as much in the other presentations, was his 

placement of academic achievements in a broader context: When he said that “providing 

opportunities to foster these cognitive abilities must be integrated in a seamless manner 

with interactions to develop social competencies and emotional health to refl ect the 

inseparable nature of these developmental achievements” (emphasis added). I will return to 

these viewpoints in the fi nal section of this paper, but fi rst, I want to review the important 

considerations in defi ning readiness for success in school. 

Back to Basics: Let’s Remember the Roots 

of Readiness

Three elements are crucial to the way I think about readiness: 

comprehensiveness, embeddedness, and continuity. The fi ve dimensions referred 

to above (and summarized in Attachment 1) make the defi nition comprehensive. 

The direct implication for states is that their assessment strategies should tap 

all fi ve dimensions of children’s development and learning. This may not be 

as hard as it sounds. We already see examples on the federal level of large-scale 

studies that come very close to meeting this goal. For example, the constructs 

being assessed in the Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) align quite 

nicely with the dimensions outlined by Kagan et al. (1995, see Attachment 2). The Early 

Childhood Longitudinal Study-6 Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), as well as the birth 

cohort study (ECLS-B), includes measures that span the fi ve dimensions. Interestingly, 

the Early Head Start national evaluation, although focusing on children younger than the 

preschool years, also includes measures that span the fi ve dimensions of early development 

and learning and the conditions that support them.2

Covering all the dimensions is a challenge. None of the studies cited capture all 

dimensions equally well because comprehensive assessment (a) requires extensive 

assessment with potential risk of overly intruding on the time of children, parents, and 

teachers and (b) means assessing areas for which the fi eld often lacks reliable and valid 

measures. The areas of social-emotional development and approaches toward learning are 

ASSESSING THE STATE OF STATE ASSESSMENTS

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45

Critical elements of readiness

Comprehensiveness

Embeddedness

Continuity
Instrumentation for State Readiness Assessment: 

Issues in Measuring Children’s Early Development and Learning

typically the least well measured. Nevertheless, it is a challenge that is important 

to meet head-on, since a partial assessment runs the risk of creating a biased—or, 

at best, incomplete—view of states’ and communities’ progress toward their 

readiness goals. 

Assessment must also be designed to obtain data on the conditions supporting 

children’s development described in the objectives accompanying the fi rst goal. 

The FACES measures include a parent interview that taps a portion of the 

community conditions supporting readiness, but these need to be expanded. In 

fact, there is good reason to believe that the conditions supporting readiness to 

succeed in school extend well beyond the three areas outlined by the planning 

group. These conditions might include such elements as (a) child and family conditions 

(both protective and risk factors, which include child health conditions, family income, 

and family life conditions), (b) community service provisions and their accessibility 

(including health, parenting education, childcare and early education services, and the 

“readiness” of the schools), and (c) systems capacity (such as the effi cacy and effi ciency 

with which the community infrastructure functions).3

Thus, we see readiness assessments as embedded in these supporting conditions. 

Previously, I have argued for a community-oriented perspective to best refl ect this 

“embeddedness” (Love, Aber, & Brooks-Gunn, 1994). The strength of a communitybased approach to defi ning and assessing children’s level of preparation for success in 

school is that the community can ascertain—and infl uence—the measures of success 

employed by the schools. When considering statewide assessments, we come to an 

interesting issue of what defi nes the “community.” Can an entire state constitute a 

“community,” or must we consider smaller, more-homogeneous subdivisions?

Child and family conditions impinge directly on each child’s development. To further 

illustrate what may be important for a comprehensive readiness assessment, Larry Aber, 

Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, and I suggested that assessments should include indictors of the 

extent to which the family is “thriving, safe, or in danger across a number of dimensions 

of well-being” (Love et al., 1994). As with the dimensions of children’s development 

and learning, the supporting conditions may also be tailored to what’s important in each 

“community.” They may include, for example, (a) fewer families living in unsafe housing 

or violence-prone neighborhoods, (b) reduced incidence of child abuse and neglect, 

(c) increased parental confi dence that their children have a bright future, (d) increased 

involvement of fathers in the lives of their children, and (e) healthy marriages. 

The third element is continuity. Here, I intend to characterize the nature of children’s 

experiences leading to school entry. This might be considered to be another element of the 

supporting conditions. It seems worth highlighting, however, since it refers to relationships 

among a potentially large number of supporting conditions that can extend over a number 

of years. The fi rst fi ve years of life can lend stability to the child’s development through 

continuity of experiences with family and programs, including childcare, Early Head 

Start, Head Start, pre-kindergarten programs, and various services, or the period can be 

disruptive to healthy development. Children who experience childcare and other out-ofhome care and education settings are at some risk of bouncing from one type of program 

to another. Programs can provide continuity through their service emphases, or they 

can be so different as to cause disruption as children move from one setting to another. 

However, if we want to understand how well children are prepared for school—and 

why—then readiness assessments should include some measure of the range of children’s —then readiness assessments should include some measure of the range of children’s 

program experiences over time, as well as the continuity of that experience from birth to 

school entry.

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Challenges of assessing all the

readiness dimensions:

Requires extensive assessment

Requires assessing areas for 

which the fi eld often lacks 

reliable and valid measures
Instrumentation for State Readiness Assessment: 

Issues in Measuring Children’s Early Development and Learning

Instruments for Readiness Assessment

The assessment issues related to instrumentation center around the age-old issue: “What 

can we know and when can we know it?” To answer that question, we need to look at 

advances in early childhood assessment over the last decade and think about the tough 

decisions that have to be made.

What Can We Know, and When Can We Know It?

The early childhood fi eld has made tremendous strides in the science of measuring 

important aspects of children’s early development and learning. As I’ve already noted, 

a number of national studies—including FACES, ECLS-K, and, for younger children, 

the Early Head Start program evaluation—have measured developmental constructs and 

supporting conditions not heretofore included in large-scale assessments. In fact, whereas 

two decades ago, many of us in this fi eld despaired of ever having a suffi cient number 

of good-quality instruments, the concern now is a glut of instruments, along with the 

challenging task of selecting among them. 

SERVE, for example, has recently published a compendium of assessment instruments 

(Niemeyer & Scott-Little, 2001). The compendium summarizes 39 commercially 

available instruments and, in an easy-to-use format, guides potential users to key features 

of each instrument that should be considered in selecting the instruments to use. Child 

Trends, working with Lisbeth Schorr and the Pathways Mapping Project, has compiled a 

compendium of measures used in national, state, and local data collections (Calkins, Ling, 

Moore, Halle, Hair, Moore, & Zaslow, 2001). It includes largely unpublished sources, 

while taking a different approach by providing item-level information. This compendium 

has the advantage of summarizing measures that have been used in data collections that 

may parallel data collections that states may want to launch for readiness assessment. As 

with the SERVE compilation, it evaluates the measures along a number of important 

criteria. No longer can we complain that measures either do not exist or are impossible 

to access. The challenge instead is one of sorting and sifting, to choose what will be most 

appropriate and useful for each state’s or community’s purpose.

Unfortunately, the extensive work already done for us, as refl ected just in these two 

compendia, gets us only to the starting gate. Each of us who wants to obtain valid and 

reliable data on important dimensions of children’s early development and learning 

must sift through the hundreds of measures and apply some rather complex, and often 

confl icting, criteria. 

Why the Choices Are So Diffi cult: There Is No Perfect Answer

It is almost impossible to list all the reasons why there is no perfect answer. As we all 

know, each measure has strengths and weaknesses, so, even listing the important criteria 

for evaluating available measures merely highlights the challenges. Nevertheless, the 

challenges are important, and we must meet them. Even though these criteria have been 

listed in many places, it may be useful to attempt a consolidated list. Some criteria apply 

to individual measures, but additional factors must be considered when weighing the 

appropriateness of the collection of measures that will comprise the “readiness” assessment. 

Here are what I consider the most important criteria to be.

Criteria for Choosing Individual Measures

1. Does it measure what it claims to measure?

2. Does it do so reliably?

3. Has it measured what you want it to measure reliably and validly, under fi eld 

conditions similar to those where you will use it?

4. Does it tap an important dimension of children’s early development and 

learning or of the conditions supporting development?

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Instrumentation for State Readiness Assessment: 

Issues in Measuring Children’s Early Development and Learning

5. Is the measure appropriate for the diversity of children in your state or 

community, including considerations of socioeconomic status, geographic 

regions, racial/ethnic background, linguistic groups, and disability status?

6. Is it appropriate for the age(s) of the children you are interested in?

7. Is it available to you at the time you need it?

Criteria for Evaluating the Final Set of Measures

1. Does the set encompass all of the dimensions of children’s early development 

and learning?

2. Does the set of measures also span the conditions supporting early development 

and learning that are important for your locale?

3. Will analysis of the measures provide aggregate data that will allow you to focus 

on the collective status of entering kindergartners?

4. Does the collection of measures incorporate multiple modes of assessment 

(such as direct assessment, parent or teacher ratings, observations, and selfreport) so that the fi nal judgment about “readiness” does not hinge on just one 

or two methods?

5. Are multiple perspectives included, such that ratings do not refl ect only teacher 

judgments but those, for example, of the parents as well?

6. Do the measures, overall, provide a balance of positive and negative indicators 

of development and learning?

7. Is it feasible (meaning, also affordable) for the data to be collected with 

quality and consistency across the varied settings in which the assessments 

need to be completed?

8. If the answer to number 7 is uncertain, can the set of measures be adapted to 

local circumstances while retaining their essential ingredients?

9. Do some of the measures allow you to compare results with national data?4

Consideration should also be given to the process of preparing for any large-scale 

assessment. Who participates in the decision making and how the participants are 

involved are important considerations, as are the issues of design and implementation. 

Although the process will differ with each state and community, it is important that there 

be open discussion about the process. In many respects, readiness assessment meets all 

the criteria for “high-stakes” testing, which engenders so much concern and controversy 

among the many stakeholders in our children’s educational futures. 

“Early to Learn”: Developing a Broader Perspective

In the concluding section of the paper, I want to briefl y suggest a perspective 

with which to view the assessment enterprise. In a number of respects, 

readiness assessment—or, as I prefer to think of it, assessment of children’s 

early development and learning upon entry into school—can be thought of as 

program evaluation but evaluation in a very special sense. Although kindergarten 

entry is the beginning of a long educational journey for each child, it also 

represents the culmination of his or her fi rst fi ve years of life. What children know, 

what they can do, what attitudes and inclinations they have—all are a function of the 

families they have lived in, the neighborhoods in which they have played, the many (or 

few) caring adults who have nurtured them (or not), and the programs and activities 

they have participated in (or not). America’s children have taken ballet lessons, put up 

with bullies, enjoyed Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and been subject to 

violence and danger. They have attended church, mosque, temple, or synagogue, or not. 

All of these, and the thousands of other experiences in children’s early lives, contribute to 

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48

Kindergarten represents the 

culmination of a child’s fi rst fi ve 

years of life.
Instrumentation for State Readiness Assessment: 

Issues in Measuring Children’s Early Development and Learning

their language, their cognitive and physical abilities, their emotions and social skills, and 

the way they approach new learning opportunities. Our challenge is to fi nd a practical 

assessment process that will capture the “outcomes” of these vast and varied experiences. 

In my “theory of change” about the fi rst fi ve years of life and what outcomes they should 

lead to, the expected outcomes look very much like the dimensions of early development 

and learning that now stand for readiness. It is for these reasons that I put so much 

stress on fi nding the measures that do justice to the full and comprehensive dimensions 

of readiness and to administering them in a way that allows the results of this fi ve-year 

process to be seen. Let us not shrink from moving forward to screen all children on 

hearing, vision, and pre-reading knowledge, while at the same time understanding the 

inseparable nature of the children’s range of developmental achievements.

End Notes

1 While this committee of the National Goals Panel proudly—and for good reasons—described “children’s early

 development and learning” without using the term “readiness,” it is increasingly awkward to engage in

 constructive discussions about the issues without it. Discussing “readiness for success in school” seems to avoid

 some of the problems with traditional use of “readiness for school” or, even worse, “readiness to learn.”

2 Administration on Children, Youth, and Families. (June 2001). Building their futures: How Early Head Start

 programs are enhancing the lives of infants and toddlers in low-income families. Washington, DC: U.S.

 Department of Health and Human Services. Also see Chapter 2 in ACYF (December 1999). Leading the

 way: Characteristics and early experiences of selected early Head Start programs; Volume I: Cross-site perspectives.

 Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

3 Although systems capacity is a very important consideration, its assessment probably is beyond the scope of 

 most community readiness efforts. 

4 I do not think this is an essential criterion; nevertheless, it should be considered as a possible advantage 

 for interpreting assessment results.

References

Calkins, J., Ling, T., Moore, E., Halle, T., Hair, B., Moore, K., & Zaslow, M. (2001). 

School readiness indicator items. Washington, DC: Child Trends, Inc.

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

development and learning: Toward common views and vocabulary. Washington, DC: 

National Education Goals Panel. 

Love, J. M., Aber, J. L., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (1994). Strategies for assessing community 

progress toward achieving the fi rst national educational goal progress toward achieving the fi rst national educational goal. Princeton, NJ: Mathematica . Princeton, NJ: Mathematica

Policy Research, Inc. 

Meisels, S. J. (1998). Assessing readiness. Ann Arbor, MI: Center for the Improvement 

of Early Reading Achievement.

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

assessment instruments. Tallahassee, FL: SERVE. 

ASSESSING THE STATE OF STATE ASSESSMENTS

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49

Attachment

One

“Readiness” Dimensions Identifi ed by the Goal 

One Technical Planning Group of the National 

Education Goals Panel

A. Dimensions Based on the Major Conditions that Support Readiness

The family and community conditions that support readiness are spelled out in the three

objectives that accompany the goal itself:

“All children will have access to high-quality and developmentally appropriate

pre-school programs that help prepare children for school.

Every parent in America will be a child’s fi rst teacher and devote time each day

helping his or her pre-school child learn; parents will have access to the training 

and support they need.

Children will receive the nutrition and health care needed to arrive at school with 

healthy minds and bodies, and the number of low-birth weight babies will be 

signifi cantly reduced through enhanced prenatal health systems” (Kagan, Moore, & 

Bredekamp, 1995).

B. Dimensions and Criteria of Children’s Early Learning, Development, 

 and Abilities

Each of the fi ve dimensions of early learning, development, and abilities includes a number 

of criteria for assessment.

1. Physical Well-Being and Motor Development

Physical development (rate of growth, physical fi tness, and body physiology;

prevention of diseases; disabilities)

Physical abilities (gross-motor skills, fi ne-motor skills, sensorimotor skills, oral 

motor skills, and functional performance)

Background and contextual conditions of physical development (the

perinatal context, caregiving environment, and health care utilization; 

vulnerabilities, such as prenatal alcohol exposure; environmental risks, such as 

harmful aspects of the community environment)

2. Social and Emotional Development

Emotional development (feeling states regarding self and others, including selfconcept; emotions, such as joy, fear, anger, grief, disgust, delight, horror, shame, 

pride, and guilt; self-effi cacy; and the ability to express feelings appropriately, 

including empathy and sensitivity to the feelings of others)

Social development (ability to form and sustain social relationships with adults 

and friends, and social skills necessary to cooperate with peers; ability to form 

and sustain reciprocal relationships; understanding the rights of others; ability to 

treat others equitably and to avoid being overly submissive or directive; ability to 

distinguish between incidental and intentional actions; willingness to give and 

receive support; ability to balance one’s own needs against those of others, creating 

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51
Attachment One

opportunities for affection and companionship; ability to solicit and listen to 

others’ points of view; being emotionally secure with parents and teachers; 

being open to approaching others with expectations of positive and prosocial 

interactions, or trust)

3. Approaches Toward Learning 1

Predispositions (gender, temperament, and cultural patterns and values)

Learning styles (openness to and curiosity about new tasks and challenges; 

initiative, task persistence, and attentiveness; approach to refl ection and 

interpretation; capacity for invention and imagination; and cognitive approaches 

“styles” to tasks)

4. Language Development

Verbal language (listening, speaking, social uses of language, vocabulary and 

meaning, questioning, and creative uses of language)

Emerging literacy (literature awareness, print awareness [including assigning 

verbal labels to familiar letters, sound-letter combinations, and recognizing own 

name in writing], story sense [beginning, middle, end], and writing process 

[ordered scribbling, producing writing confi gurations])

5. Cognition and General Knowledge

Knowledge (physical knowledge, logico-mathematical knowledge, and social 

conventional knowledge)

Cognitive competencies (representational thought, problem solving, mathematical 

knowledge, social knowledge, and imagination)

End Notes

1 Kagan, Moore, and Bredekamp note that approaches toward learning are particularly important for success

 in school because the “mere acquisition of knowledge, skills, and capacities is an insuffi cient criterion” without

 children’s inclination to marshal these skills.

ASSESSING THE STATE OF STATE ASSESSMENTS

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52
Attachment 

Two

How Head Start Performance Measures Are 

Aligned with the Goal One Dimensions

Goal One Learning & Development DimensionHead Start 

Performance Measures

Physical well-being and 

motor development 

Gross and fi ne motor skills

 Positive social behavior

 Personal maturity

 Behavior problems

 Social interaction with peers

 Social awareness

 Relationships with adults

 Creativity

 Initiative

 Attitudes toward learning

 Task mastery

 Emergent literacy and 

language skills

 Receptive vocabulary

 Letter recognition

 Book knowledge

 Print awareness

 Numerical skills

 General memory

 Color naming

 Reasoning

 Problem solving

 Musical ability

Social and emotional development

Approaches toward learning

Language development

Cognition and general knowledge

ASSESSING THE STATE OF STATE ASSESSMENTS

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53
Attachment Two

Measures Used in the Head Start Family and Child 

Experiences Survey (FACES), 1996–2001*

Child

Howes Peer Play Scale

Social Awareness Tasks

Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III

Phonemic Analysis Subtest (TOLD-3), K and 1

ECLS-K Reading and General Knowledge Assessments (K and 1)

Child Health Profi le (First Grade)

McCarthy Draw-A-Design

Color Names and Counting

Woodcock-Johnson Letter-Word Identifi cation (4 years and older)

Woodcock-Johnson Applied Problems (4 years and older)

Woodcock-Johnson Dictation (4 years and older)

Story and Print Concepts

Social Behavior Ratings (Parent, Teacher, Assessor)

Personal Maturity Scale (selected items)(Parent and Teacher)

Problem Behavior Ratings (Parent and Teacher)

Child Observation Record (Social Relationships, Creative Representations, 

and Music & Movement Subscales) (Teacher)

Classroom

Assessment Profi le Scheduling Scale

Assessment Profi le Learning Environment Scale

Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS)

Arnett Scale of Caregiver Behavior

Counts of staff/children

Staff Interviews and Reporting Forms

Head Start Teacher Self-Administered Survey

Kindergarten Teacher Self-Administered Survey

Other staff interviews

Parent Interviews

Family demographics

Child’s developmental accomplishments

Parent-child activities

Disabilities

Parent involvement and satisfaction with Head Start

Child’s behavior

Household rules

Employment and income

Community services

Childcare

Family health care

Home safety

Home and neighborhood characteristics

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Attachment Two

Parent’s feelings including:

 CES-D Depression Scale

 Pearlin Mastery Scale

 Family Support Scale

Case Study Home Visit Parent Interviews

Parents’ description of Head Start child

Primary reasons for enrolling child in Head Start

Hopes and goals for Head Start child

Perceptions of family strengths

Perceptions of areas for family improvements

Perceptions of family problems that may interfere with child’s adjustment to Head Start

A typical day for Head Start child and family

Family’s participation and satisfaction with Head Start

Parenting beliefs, hopes, goals, and satisfaction

Neighborhood characteristics

Home observations

Neighborhood observation checklist

Case Study Monthly Telephone Contact Interviews

Household composition

Child health

Adult health

Childcare arrangements

Employment/economic status

Family participation in Head Start

Family contact with community agencies

Social support (intimate, informational, and instrumental)

Family resources

Psychological well-being (CES-D)

Signifi cant family events

Head Start satisfaction

Transition to kindergarten

Case Study Community Agency Interviews

Type of agency, agency services, agency goals and mission, and target population

Organization of service delivery and referral systems

Collaboration with Head Start

Perception of relationship with Head Start and satisfaction

* I am indebted to Louisa Tarullo, Commissioner’s Offi ce of Research and Evaluation, ACYF, for providing this

 listing of the FACES instruments. Bold Italics indicate the measures that provide data on child outcomes. indicate the measures that provide data on child outcomes. 

 FACES 2000, a second national cohort study, added the Leiter Sustained Attention Subtest to the child battery,

 substituted the ECERS-R for the ECERS, added the Assessment Profi le Individualizing Scale, and added a 

father questionnaire.

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55

Statewide School

Readiness Assessments:

Challenges and 

Next Steps Next Steps

Challenges and 

Abstract

As states proceed with the work of designing strategies for school readiness assessment, 

selecting assessment instruments, implementing the assessments, and communicating results, 

they are encountering a series of challenges. This paper discusses these emerging challenges 

and offers some suggestions on steps states can take to start to address them. 

Introduction

A growing number of states are collecting and reporting on statewide assessments of school 

readiness (Saluja, Scott-Little, & Clifford, 2000; see also papers by Meunchow, Schweinhart, 

and Love in this volume on school readiness assessment). As states proceed with the work 

of designing strategies for assessment, selecting assessment instruments, implementing the 

assessments, and communicating results, they are encountering a series of challenges. These 

range from concerns about the adequacy of existing assessments of children’s school readiness 

to concerns about how to communicate results effectively.

The purpose of this paper is to describe six challenges that are surfacing repeatedly across the 

states that are already in the process of implementing systems of school readiness assessment.1

A careful delineation of the challenges emerging across these states can hopefully lay the 

groundwork for identifying solutions. 

Challenge #1: To continue to build on clearly stated principles 

for school readiness assessments

A fi rst challenge concerns the need to continue to reference and build on statements of 

principle for school readiness assessment from past decades. Such statements of principle have 

had noteworthy effects on the way in which school readiness has been conceptualized, the 

selection of assessment instruments, and the ways in which assessments of school readiness 

have been used. 

A major example of an articulation of principles shaping practice comes from the work 

reviewing assessment practices in the late 1980s. A survey conducted by the National 

Academy of Sciences and the National Association of State Boards of Education regarding 

testing practices for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten children found widespread use of IQlike tests with a narrow cognitive focus being used to make decisions about placement and 

ASSESSING THE STATE OF STATE ASSESSMENTS

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57

Martha Zaslow and Tamara Halle, Child Trends
Statewide School Readiness Assessments:

Challenges and Next Steps

retention for young children. Concerns were raised about the reliability and validity of 

some of the tests and about the use of the tests for placement when there were questions 

about the stability of children’s scores at these ages. Questions were also raised about 

screening tests, intended to make decisions about whether further in-depth assessment was 

needed, instead being used without appropriate follow-up to make placement decisions. 

Joint statements by professional organizations, researchers, and practitioners were made 

against the use of testing to deny age-eligible children entry into kindergarten. The 

articulation of principles was largely effective in shaping practice. A survey of states in 

the mid-1990s found progress away from the use of testing to determine kindergarten 

entry and retention and a diminution in the inappropriate use of screening instruments 

(Shepard, Taylor, & Kagan, 1996; see also Saluja et al., 2000, for a more recent survey of 

state assessment practices). 

Another major example concerns the identifi cation of children’s school readiness as being 

multidimensional. A series of literature reviews regarding children’s early development has 

consistently underscored the need to consider children’s readiness for school as including 

but extending beyond early cognitive development. The National Education Goals Panel’s 

review of the research resulted in a conceptualization of readiness in children as involving 

fi ve dimensions: early literacy and cognitive development, socioemotional development, 

motor development and health, communicative skills, and approaches to learning (Kagan, 

Moore, & Bredekamp, 1995). In an important recent update, a review of the evidence 

on early development completed by the National Academy of Science’s Committee on 

Integrating the Science of Early Development and reported on in the volume Neurons 

to Neighborhoods to Neighborhoods (National Research Council & Institute of Medicine, 2000) concludes (National Research Council & Institute of Medicine, 2000) concludes 

also that school readiness includes but goes beyond cognitive development. This volume 

stresses the importance of social and emotional development in the early years for later 

academic adjustment and progress (see also Huffman, Mehlinger, & Kerivan, 2000, for a 

review focusing specifi cally on the socioemotional aspects of school readiness). 

At the national, state, and local levels, strategies to measure children’s school readiness 

have been built around the conceptualization of children’s readiness as multidimensional. 

For example, in national data collection, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—

Kindergarten Class of 1998–1999 (ECLS-K) and the Head Start Family and Child 

Experiences Survey (FACES) both include measures of the fi ve dimensions of children’s 

school readiness identifi ed by the National Education Goals Panel’s literature review. At 

the state level, efforts like North Carolina’s state representative sample looking at the status 

of children in the state at kindergarten entry (as well as the status of the kindergarten 

classes and the schools receiving the children), chose assessment instruments to refl ect 

these fi ve dimensions of readiness in children (Maxwell, Bryant, Ridley, & Keyes-Elstein, 

2001). Similarly, in Florida, a task force on school readiness assessment stated among 

its principles for assessment that the multiple dimensions of children’s readiness should 

be recognized and assessed (Florida Partnership Board, School Readiness Performance 

Standards Workgroup, 2000). At the local level, work by John Love, Larry Aber, and 

Jeanne Brooks-Gunn (1994, 1999) provides a detailed “blueprint” for selecting measures 

of each of the fi ve dimensions of children’s school readiness for use in community 

monitoring of children’s readiness.

A key challenge for the new state work on school readiness assessment is the need to 

continue to reference rather than lose sight of these statements of principle representing 

the views of major panels that included respected researchers and experienced 

practitioners. Referencing these statements of principle can help guard against drift 

back into using school readiness assessments for placement and retention purposes and 

drift back into the selection of assessment instruments around a narrow rather than 

multidimensional view of readiness. A further challenge is to continue to articulate 

additional guiding principles as work at the state level moves forward. 

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Statewide School Readiness Assessments:

Challenges and Next Steps

Challenge #2: To be explicit about the purposes of assessment 

Another challenge emerging across states is the need to be clear about the purpose states 

have in carrying out assessments of school readiness and the need for caution about the use 

of specifi c assessment tools for purposes other than the ones for which they were developed. than the ones for which they were developed.

In response to a request by Congress, the National Education Goals Panel reviewed 

research and practice on the assessment of young children (NEGP, 1998a). Their review 

identifi ed four distinct purposes for the assessment of young children: (1) assessment to 

support learning by individual children, (2) assessment for the identifi cation of special 

needs in individual children, (3) assessment for program evaluation and for monitoring 

trends in geographical units like counties or states, and (4) “high-stakes accountability” 

assessment, used to make decisions about individual children, teachers, and classrooms 

(such as placement decisions for children and salary decisions for teachers). 

The NEGP review on assessment of young children underscores the need to use the 

purpose of assessment as the starting point in selecting an assessment strategy. For example, 

if the purpose of assessment is to help teachers plan individualized instruction, then 

assessing every child within the classroom is an appropriate strategy; however, if the purpose 

is to evaluate a program that is being implemented in a school, assessing a representative 

sample of children across classrooms in that school may be more appropriate. Further, 

assessments carried out for each of the purposes have different technical requirements 

(for example, regarding reliability and validity as well as sampling) and also have different 

audiences for the information obtained (for example, teachers, parents, and children are 

the audience for information from assessments to benefi t instruction, while the public 

and policymakers are the audience for information obtained from monitoring trends). 

Of particular importance here, the review urges great caution regarding attempts to use 

any strategy of assessment for a purpose other than the one for which it was intended. For 

example, screening instruments are appropriate as initial assessment tools for identifying 

children with special needs but are not likely to be appropriate as tools for program 

evaluation. Different tools are appropriate for different purposes. 

Much discussion within and across states currently focuses on whether assessments 

originally designed to inform instruction should be used for other purposes, and if so, 

how. Specifi cally, the issue for many states is whether and how to use assessments that 

support learning for the purpose of providing a picture of how children in the state as 

a whole are faring as they enter kindergarten and progress through it. Assessments to 

support learning are intended to help shape the course of instruction for individual 

children by identifying what children know and can do and where they should proceed 

in their learning (see discussion in NEGP, 1998a). Such assessments occur on an ongoing 

basis throughout the academic year (rather than only at the start or end of the year) and 

are embedded within the content of curriculum. They can be collected through teacher 

observation, collection of samples of children’s work, or asking questions of children or 

parents. The NEGP review notes the need for tools to guide observations of children’s 

progress and for training in the use of such tools within such assessment systems. Recently, 

there have been important steps in the development and implementation of observational 

systems to support individual children’s learning. For example, a number of states have 

implemented the Work Sampling System developed by Meisels (1999, 2000), with 

statewide training of teachers, and universal collection of data for children in public 

kindergarten and other grades. 

The challenge for states interested in statewide monitoring of school readiness concerns 

cautions about using assessment data for purposes other than for what they were intended. 

In some states, the decision has been made to aggregate data from Work Sampling 

and other observational systems in order to monitor trends in children’s readiness 

statewide over time. Muenchow (2001) notes another concern that can arise as states 

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Statewide School Readiness Assessments:

Challenges and Next Steps

put electronic repositories in place, and data from assessments to support instruction 

are entered into such “data warehouses.” Even if the initial purpose of assessment was to 

support instruction and the state did not plan to use the data for monitoring trends, the 

warehousing of such data may leave open the possibility of use for this purpose.

Questions have been raised about whether data from teacher observations to support 

instruction have suffi cient inter-rater reliability for the data to be used beyond the 

originally intended purpose. Concerns have also been raised about drift in ratings over 

time and the need to have ongoing rather than only initial teacher training on the 

observational systems. A fundamental issue is whether these assessments, intended to 

help chart the course for individual children and help inform parents of their children’s 

progress, meet or even should meet the technical requirements for assessments that can 

provide a consistent portrayal across a community or state of children’s performance.

The issues that have been raised by states could be addressed empirically in further work. 

For example, it might be fruitful to have a special study looking at how scores from 

measures to support instruction “map” onto those from direct assessments (such as those 

used in the ECLS-K and FACES). Studies could be carried out that directly examine 

the issues of inter-rater reliability in teacher ratings and of “drift” in reliability over time. 

These follow-up steps could help shed light on the appropriateness of aggregating and 

reporting on scores from assessments to support individual children’s instruction.

Challenge #3: To ensure that assessments include children whose 

fi rst language is not English, and to be clear about the purposes of 

such assessments

A third challenge concerns school readiness assessments for children whose fi rst language 

is not English. A number of assessments of children’s school readiness are available in 

languages other than English, especially Spanish. State protocols for assessing children’s 

readiness may call for use of assessments in the child’s fi rst language if profi ciency in 

English is limited. While this may not be feasible in all languages, assessment in the major 

languages other than English represented in a geographical area may be an option.

Even if assessments are available in languages other than English, however, questions can 

be raised about the underlying goal of such assessment. Is the goal to:

Get a sense of profi ciency in the child’s fi rst language?

Determine initial level of profi ciency in English as children enter kindergarten?

Determine mastery of English over time, as children are exposed to instruction 

and social interaction in English?

Determine mastery in both the child’s fi rst language and English to underscore 

the importance of both languages to children’s cognitive development and to 

functioning in multiple cultural contexts?

There are linkages here with the issue of the purposes of assessment. For example, if the 

purpose of assessment is to inform an individual child’s course of instruction, then it may be 

most important to chart mastery of English over time or mastery of English as it co-occurs 

with continued development in the fi rst language. In contrast, if the purpose of assessment 

is to monitor trends over time in the state as a whole, then it may be more important to 

assess initial level of profi ciency in English in order to report on trends over time in the 

proportion of children who enter kindergarten needing to develop further profi ciency. 

Some states have taken very seriously the challenge of assessing not only children’s 

readiness for school but also schools’ readiness for children (NEGP, 1998b). This 

“interactionist” view of school readiness, focusing on the fi t between children’s 

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Statewide School Readiness Assessments:

Challenges and Next Steps

characteristics upon school entry and the characteristics and resources of the schools 

receiving the children, has been described in the work of Love and colleagues (1994, 

1999) and Meisels (1999, 2000). This further perspective on school readiness raises the 

challenge of how to measure schools’ readiness to receive children whose fi rst language is 

not English. States may wish to articulate their goals for services to such children and to 

include measures reporting on the availability and use of such services. 

A fruitful next step here might be to convene a working group of interested representatives 

from states, along with researchers and policymakers. Such a working group could examine 

current state practices in assessing children with a fi rst language other than English, make 

recommendations about appropriate goals for assessment with these children, review 

available assessment instruments, and explore the concept of whether and how to measure 

schools’ readiness for those children who are not yet profi cient in English.

While we focus here on the challenge of assessment of children with special needs 

concerning mastery of English, a parallel set of issues could be articulated for the special 

needs of children with disabling conditions.

Challenge #4: To strengthen assessments of specifi c dimensions 

of school readiness

A recurrent theme across states proceeding with school readiness assessments is concern 

about available measures for assessing the socioemotional aspects of children’s school 

readiness. Measures of cognitive development and literacy generally appear to have better 

psychometric properties than measures of socioemotional development and often refl ect 

more extensive work with national samples as part of the development of the measures. 

A recently completed review of research concludes that there is better across-time 

prediction for measures of children’s cognitive than socioemotional development from 

the preschool years or the kindergarten year through the second grade (La Paro & Pianta, 

2000). While these patterns may indeed refl ect on greater underlying continuity within 

the cognitive domain (a fi nding that would suggest greater importance in measuring 

cognitive development than socioemotional development at kindergarten entry), an 

important alternative interpretation is that the stronger cross-time prediction for cognitive 

measures may rest in stronger characteristics of the measures themselves. 

Concerns about limitations with measures of socioemotional development go beyond 

research and practice in the area of school readiness. Such concerns were raised in a recent 

review of child outcome measures used in the research on childcare quality (Zaslow, Reidy, 

Moorehouse, Halle, Calkins, & Margie, 2002). Problems with the psychometric properties 

of measures were more often found for socioemotional than for cognitive measures. 

Further, this review found a lack of consensus about what aspects of socioemotional 

development to measure. Looking across the studies of childcare quality, studies 

encompassed measures addressing a wide range of constructs pertaining to socioemotional 

development, with little agreement across studies regarding which constructs to focus on. 

This seriously limits the capacity to compare fi ndings across studies.

A further concern expressed by states is that the problems with measurement may be more 

acute with respect to positive than problematic aspects of socioemotional development. 

Indeed, much more extensive work has gone into developing measures of behavior 

problems than measures of positive social development. 

In terms of next steps, there appears to be a need for work towards (a) identifying the 

key constructs in the domain of socioemotional development that are most important 

to measure in assessing school readiness, (b) identifying the strongest existing measures 

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Statewide School Readiness Assessments:

Challenges and Next Steps

of these constructs, and (c) where necessary, working towards the development of new 

measures, especially with respect to positive social development. Such efforts could be 

informative in substantive areas beyond the work in children’s readiness for school.

Challenge #5: To work towards making explicit the connections 

between measures of children’s readiness and resources allocated 

to young children 

One of the four purposes of assessment of young children (NEGP, 1998a) is tracking and 

monitoring trends in the well-being of young children in a geographical unit, like the 

state. If collected at a single point in time, data collected universally or for a representative 

sample of a state’s children can help identify groups of children who are at particular risk 

or aspects of development that are of concern. If data on children at kindergarten entry 

are collected every year or at periodic intervals, these can serve as “indicators” of the wellbeing of young children (Phillips & Love, 1997) and provide trends pointing to changes 

in a favorable or unfavorable direction for children in a geographical unit over time. 

As noted by Henry (2001), the use of assessments of young children for this purpose can 

be seen as refl ecting the cumulative investments by a state or community in its young 

children. It can inform a legislature as to where investments are needed. When measures 

are collected annually or at periodic intervals over time, such data can be used to provide 

markers of whether changes in an expected direction are occurring in keeping with a 

public investment. 

As one example, in the state of Rhode Island, an indicator was developed to measure the 

number of children in the state entering kindergarten with elevated blood lead levels (see 

description in Zaslow et al., 2001). In 1996, data reported in the Rhode Island Kids Count

fact book indicated that approximately one in three children in the state were entering 

kindergarten with elevated blood lead levels and that this fi gure was higher (nearly one 

in two) for children in cities with the highest child poverty rates. The publication and 

dissemination of this indicator resulted in serious concern within the state about the lack 

of lead-poisoning prevention and treatment programs for young children; consequently, 

new programs were launched. Trends in this indicator continued to be monitored, and 

by the year 2000, the proportion of children statewide with elevated blood lead levels had 

declined from 36% to 13%. 

Indicator data cannot pinpoint causality. It is only with experimental data that it would be 

possible to attribute a change of this kind over time, with confi dence, to the intervention 

(rather than, for example, to an improved economy resulting in many families moving 

out of housing that exposes children to lead). Nevertheless, in this example, indicator 

data suffi ced to highlight an area of concern where further investment in young children 

appeared warranted and to document changes over time consistent with the investment.

States are concerned that data used to track and monitor child well-being are often assumed

to refl ect the cumulative investments in young children, with little or no direct measurement 

of the investments themselves. In addition to collecting measures of child well-being over 

time, it may also be important to identify key markers of investments in young children. 

The work of the Child Indicators Project (as summarized in Zaslow et al., 2001) and 

a newly launched project focusing specifi cally on school readiness indicators (School 

Readiness Indicators Project2) provides some guidance as to the kinds of measures ) provides some guidance as to the kinds of measures 

that could be collected regarding state investments in early childhood development. A 

meaningful next step here would be dissemination of the knowledge gleaned from these 

projects regarding indicators not only of children’s school readiness but also of investments 

in readiness.

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Statewide School Readiness Assessments:

Challenges and Next Steps

Challenge #6: To work towards more effective communication of fi ndings 

on school readiness to state legislatures and the public

A fi nal challenge emerging across states concerns the need for more effective 

communication of fi ndings on school readiness to state legislatures and the public. More 

specifi cally, states are concerned with how to make fi ndings useful and used while not 

oversimplifying or distorting the nature of the data in the process of communication.

One example of the potential challenge, and also of a solution, is illustrated by a strategy 

adopted by North Carolina in anticipation of the release of its report on the readiness of 

the state’s children for kindergarten and the readiness of kindergartens for the children 

(Maxwell et al., 2001). The issue was the possible expectation by members of the state 

legislature and the public that school readiness data would be summarized in terms of 

a single score (as in “X% of the children in the state are ready for school”). Yet North 

Carolina’s Ready for School Goal Team (Ready for School Goal Team, 2000) had decided 

that it was important for data collection to be in keeping with the perspective that school 

readiness is multidimensional, and the data collection focused on the fi ve dimensions of 

readiness in children (as well as markers of readiness in schools). 

In order to ensure that the nature of the fi ndings would be appropriately anticipated and 

understood, the research members of the Ready for School Goal Team developed a mockup of the report to share with the Governor and other key stakeholders before the data 

were available (Maxwell & Ridley, 2001). The mock-up provided one or two indicators 

for each dimension of children’s readiness and the readiness of schools and illustrated how 

the distributions of scores would be portrayed (rather than a ready/not ready break for 

each measure). This mock-up was effective in introducing key members of the public and 

legislature to the nature of the fi ndings that would eventually be released, and the report, 

when ready, was well received and understood.

A possible follow-up step here would be to prepare a working paper drawing together case 

studies of effective communication with the public and the media on issues concerning 

school readiness.

Conclusion

The challenges facing states as they put school readiness assessment systems in place 

cut across (a) design issues—for example, the challenge of how to include all children, 

including those whose fi rst language is not English, in the assessment process, and the 

challenge of designing an assessment system to refl ect the readiness of schools as well as 

of children (b) instrumentation issues—for example, concerns about the measures of 

socioemotional development and concerns about using specifi c assessment instruments 

for purposes other than the ones for which they were developed; (c) implementation 

issues—for example, the issue of teacher training and inter-rater reliability on measures to 

inform children’s instruction; and (d) communication issues—for example, the concern 

with communicating fi ndings in a way that does not oversimplify or distort results. 

It will be important to sustain a process of communication across states, to share 

experiences with the challenges already noted, to identify new challenges as they arise, 

and especially to work towards effective approaches for addressing the challenges.

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Statewide School Readiness Assessments:

Challenges and Next Steps

End Notes

1 These issues were identifi ed by participants at the symposium “Assessing the State of State Assessments.” The

 states participating were California, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, and

 South Carolina. We are indebted to the symposium organizers and participants and hope we have captured the

 issues that they raised accurately.

2 This initiative, involving 16 states working to develop indicators of school readiness, is being funded by the

 Packard Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Kauffman Foundation. Leadership for this project is provided 

 by Elizabeth Burke Bryant and Catherine Walsh of Rhode Island Kids Count.

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Statewide School Readiness Assessments:

Challenges and Next Steps

National Education Goals Panel. (1998b). Ready schools. Washington, DC: National 

Education Goals Panel.

National Research Council and Institute of Medicine. (2000). From neurons to 

neighborhoods: The science of early childhood development. Committee on Integrating the 

Science of Early Childhood Development. J. P. Schkoff & D. A. Phillips (Eds.), Board 

on Children, Youth, and Families, Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and 

Education. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Phillips, D., & Love, J. (1997). Indicators of school readiness, schooling, and childcare 

in early to middle childhood. In R. M. Hauser, B. V. Brown, & W. R. Prosser (Eds.), 

Indicators of children’s well being Indicators of children’s well being (pp.125–151). New York: Russell Sage Foundation. (pp.125–151). New York: Russell Sage Foundation. 

Ready for School Goal Team. (2000). School readiness in North Carolina: Strategies for 

defi ning, measuring, and promoting success for all children. Report of the Ready School 

Goal Team, North Carolina, School Improvement Panel, North Carolina State Board 

of Education. 

Saluja, G., Scott-Little, C., & Clifford, R. M. (2000). Readiness for school: A survey of 

state policies and defi nitions. Early Childhood Research and Practice [online serial], 2(2). 

Available: http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/v2n2/saluja.html

Shepard, L. A., Taylor, G. A., & Kagan, S. L. (1996). Trends in early childhood assessment 

policies and practices. Unpublished manuscript. 

Zaslow, M., Halle, T., Cabrera, N., Calkins, J., Pitzer, L., & Margie, N. G. (2002). Child 

outcome measures in research on childcare quality. Manuscript submitted for publication. 

Zaslow, M., Reidy, M., Moorehouse, M., Halle, T., Calkins, J., & Margie, N. G. (2001, 

June). Progress and prospects in the development of indicators of school readiness. Paper 

presented at the meeting on Child and Youth Indicators: Accomplishments and Future 

Directions, National Institutes of Health.

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About the Editors

Senior Scientist, Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute

Research Associate Professor, School of Education, 

 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Co-director, National Center for Early Development and Learning and the 

 National Prekindergarten Center

Richard M. Clifford’s training is in Educational Administration with specializations in 

Political Science and Research. He has taught and served as a principal in public schools. 

For more than 25 years, he has studied public policies and advised government offi cials and 

practitioners on policies affecting children and families. His work focuses on two major 

areas: public fi nancing of programs for young children and the provision of appropriate 

learning environments for preschool and early school-age children. Clifford is co-author of 

a widely used series of instruments for evaluating learning environments for children. In 

1993–1994, Clifford helped establish and served as the fi rst director of the Division of Child 

Development in the North Carolina Department of Human Resources and helped with the 

design and implementation of the state’s Smart Start early childhood initiative. He is a past 

president of the National Association for the Education of Young Children.

Professor

Teachers College, Columbia University

Sharon Lynn Kagan is the Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor of Early Childhood and 

Family Policy at Teachers College, Columbia University, and a Professor Adjunct at Yale 

University’s Child Study Center. Author of over 100 articles and 12 books, Kagan’s research 

focuses on the institutions and policies that impact child and family life. Kagan consults with 

numerous federal and state agencies, congress, governors, and legislators; is a member of 40 

national boards; and is Past President of the National Association for the Education of Young 

Children and Family Support America.

Expanded Learning Opportunities Project Director

The Regional Educational Laboratory at SERVE

Catherine Scott-Little is the Expanded Learning Opportunities Project Director at the 

Regional Educational Laboratory at SERVE. Her research has included investigation of 

wide-scale early childhood assessment systems, child-based outcome standards developed to 

describe expectations for children prior to entering kindergarten, and evaluations of afterschool programs. Scott-Little has worked with a number of states to examine their readiness 

assessment systems and to develop early learning standards. Prior to joining SERVE, ScottLittle was Deputy Director of a large Head Start program in Texas, and she also served as 

program coordinator for a child development center serving single-parent, homeless families.

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Richard M. Clifford

Sharon Lynn Kagan

Catherine Scott-Little

About the Authors

Senior Research Associate

Child Trends

Tamara Halle is a developmental psychologist and a Senior Research Associate and Content 

Area Manager for Early Childhood Development at Child Trends. Her research focuses on the 

interplay among family processes, children’s social and cognitive development, and children’s 

school readiness and achievement. Halle has helped to develop survey and observational 

studies for the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), a project 

administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), and has compiled 

indicators of child well-being in the area of education and achievement for two editions of 

Trends in the Well-Being of America’s Children and Youth. She also directed the production 

of Charting Parenthood: A Statistical Portrait of Fathers and Mothers in America. Along with 

colleagues at Child Trends, Halle is providing guidance to the states of South Carolina and 

California on the design of their statewide, community-based early childhood initiatives. 

Professor

Andrew Young School of Policy Studies

Georgia State University

Gary T. Henry is a professor in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State 

University. Henry has evaluated a variety of policies and programs, including Pre-K and the 

HOPE Scholarship in Georgia, as well as school reforms and accountability systems. The 

author of Practical Sampling (1990), Graphing Data (1995), and co-author of Evaluation: 

An Integrated Framework for Understanding, Guiding, and Improving Policies and Programs

(2000), Henry has also published extensively in the fi eld of evaluation and policy analysis. He 

received the Evaluation of the Year Award from the American Evaluation Association in 1998 

and the Joseph S. Wholey Distinguished Scholarship Award in 2001 from the American 

Society for Public Administration and the Center for Accountability and Performance.

Senior Fellow

Mathematica Policy Research

John Love is a senior fellow at Mathematica Policy Research with 30 years of experience 

conducting research, program evaluations, and policy studies with early care and education 

and family programs. He will shortly complete seven years of co-directing the national 

evaluation of the Early Head Start program for the Administration for Children and Families. 

Love has extensive experience in measuring child development and well-being throughout 

the period from infancy to the early elementary grades. He has a special interest in expanding 

the often narrow conceptualizations of school readiness and has worked extensively with 

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Tamara Halle

Gary T. Henry

John M. Love
About the Authors

federal, state, and community-level groups on issues of conceptualizing and assessing 

school readiness. He has served on numerous panels and advisory committees, including 

the Head Start Performance Measures Technical Work Group, the advisory panel for 

the evaluation of the Carnegie Corporation’s Starting Points initiative, and the DHHS 

Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Head Start Research and Evaluation.

Senior Research Scientist

American Institutes for Research

Susan Muenchow is a Senior Research Scientist at American Institutes for Research. 

Her current work includes directing a project adapting California’s Prekindergarten 

Learning and Development Guidelines to family childcare settings and participating in 

the evaluation of California’s Proposition 10 Initiative and in the National Head Start 

Impact Study. Her previous work has included serving as the fi rst director of the Florida 

Partnership for School Readiness and as the executive director of the Florida Children’s 

Forum. She is the co-author, with Dr. Edward Zigler, of Head Start: America’s Most 

Successful Educational Experiment.

Senior Research Scientist

High/Scope Educational Research Foundation

Lawrence J. Schweinhart is an early childhood program researcher and speaker. He has 

conducted research at the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation in Ypsilanti, 

Michigan, since 1975 and has chaired its research division since 1989. He currently directs 

High/Scope’s Head Start Quality Research Center, the state evaluation of the Michigan 

School Readiness Program, and the development and validation of the High/Scope Child 

Observation Record. He is the lead researcher on the High/Scope Perry Pre-school Study 

and the High/Scope Pre-school Curriculum Comparison Study. He has served on the 

Governing Board of the National Association for the Education of Young Children. 

Vice President for Research

Child Trends

Martha Zaslow is a developmental psychologist and Vice President for Research at Child 

Trends. Her research takes an ecological perspective, considering the contributions of 

different contexts to the development of children in low-income families, including 

the family, childcare, and policy contexts. In studying the role of the family, Zaslow 

has focused especially on parenting, carrying out observational studies of mother-child 

interaction in samples of families with a history of welfare receipt. In studying childcare, 

her work has focused on the use of childcare by families receiving welfare, on nonstandard 

work hours and childcare among working poor families, and on strategies to improve 

childcare quality. With respect to the policy context, Zaslow has studied the impacts on 

children of different welfare reform policies. She is participating in the evaluations of statelevel early childhood initiatives aimed at improving children’s school readiness in South 

Carolina and California.

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Susan Muenchow

Lawrence J. Schweinhart

Martha Zaslow
About the National

Center for Children 

and Families: and Families:

Center for Children 

Advancing Policy, Education, 

and Development

The National Center for Children and Families advances the policy, education, and 

development of children and their families. Housed at Teachers College, Columbia 

University, the Center produces and applies interdisciplinary research to improve 

practice and to raise public awareness of social issues that affect the well-being of America’s 

children and families. This work is accomplished through the systematic training of future 

leaders, scholars, and policy scientists; cutting-edge research and analyses; and dissemination 

of information to the media, policymakers, and practitioners.

Under the co-direction of Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Sharon Lynn Kagan, the Center brings 

together leading scholars from psychology, education, health, family studies, psychiatry, 

sociology, economics, and political science in the interdisciplinary analyses of complex social 

phenomena. The Center collaborates with various schools of Columbia University and 

departments at Teachers College and with centers engaged in similar work nationally and 

internationally. Its operations are rooted in a commitment to collective engagement in the 

solution of contemporary social and public problems.

Strategically, the Center does not accept the status quo for children and families. Its existence 

is predicated on the knowledge that a healthy America depends on socially, emotionally, 

physically, and intellectually healthy children; productive and loving families; and supportive 

and empowering communities. Its vision is that these conditions will become reality only 

through the positive synergy of premier scholarship, relentless public will, and scientifi cally 

grounded social strategies. The Center’s mission is to evoke these conditions, always mindful 

that we are not limited by what currently exists, but emboldened by what can and should be. 

The work of the Center is accomplished by its faculty and fellows through a set of synergistic 

activities, including:

Research and Publication Opportunities 

Training and Fellowship Opportunities

Policy, Legislative, and Dissemination Opportunities

The Center conducts various kinds of cutting-edge research, ranging from empirical studies 

to evaluation of intervention and prevention programs to analytic investigation of major 

issues that affect children and families. This work is conducted with colleagues from research, 

centers and institutes throughout the nation. In addition, opportunities exist for fellows to 

work with senior faculty of the National Center for Children and Families on related research 

and the Center is also affi liated with the Columbia University Institute for Child and Family 

Policy. Faculty and fellows of the Center regularly present the fi ndings of their research at 

major forums across the country and publish in distinguished journals and books.

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About the National Center for Children and Families: 

Advancing Policy, Education, and Development Advancing Policy, Education, and Development

About the National Center for Children and Families: 

With its array of policy briefs, publications, and resource guides, the Center reaches a wide 

audience, including the media, decision makers, and practitioners. Through testimony 

to policymakers from the legislative and executive branches of government, active 

engagement with national research and professional organizations and editorial policy 

boards, and participation in national study panels, the Center is constantly extending its 

reach to improve practice and raise public awareness of social issues that affect the wellbeing of children and families.

To achieve these goals, the Center presently focuses its work on the following fi ve related 

policy research themes, each of which addresses the prevention of social problems:

Early Care and Education

Families

School Transitions and Readiness

Systems/Governance

Neighborhood/Community

(Note: Below are brief descriptions of the themes.)

 Early Care and Education

 Research has shown that early childhood education has a positive impact on the lives 

 and academic performance of young children. Yet early care and education services 

 are in short supply and only a small percentage of programs provide the kind of high-

 quality care that produces the best outcomes for children. Work in early care and

 education concentrates on the analysis of relationships among the supply, quality, 

 and affordability of childcare and early education services in the United States. It 

 also examines the impacts of various prevention programs and interventions, such as

 Early Head Start and Welfare Reform, on children, families, and the supply and 

 quality of services. 

 Families

 The relationship between work and family life is central to the productivity and well-

 being of America’s citizens. The Center’s work in this area focuses on how public policies

 and programs support adults in their multiple roles. The goal is to understand and

 infl uence policies that promote healthy family life, with emphasis placed on fatherhood,

 unmarried couples, at-risk families, child support enforcement, and family support

 prevention programs.

 School Transitions and Readiness 

 Preparing children for school and future life success ranks high on the nation’s policy

 agenda. School readiness initiatives and greater attention to children’s transitions in

 early childhood and beyond are emerging as integral parts of education reform and

 larger social reform movements in support of children and families. The Center’s

 work in this area spans the continuum from transitions in the earliest years of life

 through middle school, with particular attention given to the intersection of school

 and family changes and the impact on children’s emotional and social well-being.

 Systems/Governance

 In contrast to other developed nations, America does not have an integrated,

 comprehensive system of early care and education for its youngest citizens. The

 Center’s work in this area acknowledges the lack of such a system. It examines all the

 elements, including governance and fi nance, that need to be addressed in the creation 

 of an early care and education system and includes strategies for outreach and

 dissemination of information for those attempting to develop a more coherent

 approach to service delivery for young children and families. 

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About the National Center for Children and Families: Advancing Policy, Education, and Development Advancing Policy, Education, and Development

About the National Center for Children and Families: 

 Neighborhood/Community

 Healthy children can only develop in the context of healthy neighborhoods and

 communities. In recognition of this knowledge, most work of the Center includes a

 neighborhood/community component. The Center’s projects focused exclusively in

 this area examine the infl uence of neighborhood processes on children of different ages

 and the effects of residential change on low-income families, with particular attention

 given to the intersection of neighborhood and family resources and the opportunities

 and challenges they present for enhancing the well-being of children.

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About the National Center for 

Early Development and Learning Early Development and Learning

About the National Center for 

Early Development and Learning

The National Center for Early Development and Learning (NCEDL), established in 

1996, is the national early childhood research center funded by the U.S. Department 

of Education. The Center is a component of the Frank Porter Graham Child 

Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Currently, 

NCEDL is engaged in a major, multi-state, longitudinal study of (a) the relation between 

school-related pre-kindergarten experiences and early school outcomes for children and (b) 

the transition from pre-kindergarten through kindergarten. NCEDL is also involved in a 

number of other research activities to support the Department and to further research in early 

childhood education in the U.S. 

In recent years, schools have become increasingly involved in providing services for children 

and families prior to kindergarten entry and the public investment in formal, school-related 

programs for young children has soared. To date there have been no systematic multi-state 

studies of the nature and quality of experiences offered to children in these settings or the 

extent to which variation in experiences relates to child outcomes. Controversy exists about 

such critical issues as the extent to which academic skills should be taught, the amount and 

type of teacher training required, the role of families in the programs, and the intensity 

needed to achieve desired results. Thus NCEDL chose to target its research capability 

primarily toward addressing this pressing set of issues for our country. The current study 

aims to fi ll this gap through a six state, two-year study of 240 pre-kindergarten classrooms 

and 960 children. Information on quality, practices, and outcomes is being collected through 

intensive observations, child assessments, interviews, and questionnaires during 

pre-kindergarten and kindergarten.

In addition to this major study of school-related pre-kindergartens, NCEDL is conducting 

sub-studies using this same sample, including one that invovles interviews in family’s homes 

and one considering the fi nancing of pre-kindergarten programs. NCEDL also is continuing 

its data collection efforts around state pre-kindergarten initiatives and other research 

requested by the U.S. Department of Education. Dissemination of relevant fi ndings and 

policy recommendations is a high priority for NCEDL.

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About SERVE

S

ERVE, directed by Dr. John R. Sanders, 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 members 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 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 

offi cers, 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 National Institute for Education Sciences, the 

Regional Educational Laboratory for the Southeast is one of ten programs providing researchbased information and services to all 50 states and territories. These Laboratories form a 

nationwide education 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 Southeast Eisenhower Regional Consortium for 

Mathematics and Science Education and the SouthEast Initiatives Regional Technology in 

Education Consortium (SEIRuTEC). 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 

and the Adjunct ERIC Clearinghouse on 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 Leadership

Education Policy

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About SERVE

Improvement of Science and Mathematics Education

Reading and School Improvement

Technology in Learning

In addition to the program areas, the SERVE Evaluation Unit supports the evaluation 

activities of the major grants and contracts and provides contracted evaluation services to 

state and local education agencies in the region. The Technology Support Group provides 

SERVE staff and their constituents with IT support, technical assistance, and software 

applications. Through its Publications Unit, SERVE publishes a variety of studies, training 

materials, policy briefs, and program products. Among the many products developed at 

SERVE, two receiving national recognition include Achieving Your Vision of Professional 

Development Development, honored by the National Staff Development Council, and , honored by the National Staff Development Council, and Study Guide for 

Classroom Assessment: Linking Instruction and Assessment, honored by Division H of AERA. , honored by Division H of AERA. 

Through its programmatic, technology, evaluation, and publishing activities, SERVE 

provides contracted staff development and technical assistance in specialized areas to assist 

education agencies in achieving their school improvement goals.

SERVE’s main offi ce is at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, with major 

staff groups located in Tallahassee, Florida, and Atlanta, Georgia, as well as satellite 

offi ces in Durham, North Carolina, and Shelby, Mississippi. Unique among the ten 

Regional Educational Laboratories, SERVE employs a full-time policy analyst to assist 

the chief state school offi cer at the state education agencies in each of the states in the 

SERVE region. These analysts act as SERVE’s primary liaisons to the state departments of 

education, providing research-based policy services to state-level education. 

SERVE Main Offi ce • P.O. Box 5367 • Greensboro, NC 27435

800-755-3277 • 336-315-7400 • Fax 336-315-7457

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

www.serve.org

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Wide-scale assessment systems to collect data on the characteristics of large numbers of young children have become increasingly

common in recent years, and educators, both at the federal and the state level, have seen increasing pressure to assess children

at younger ages. With this increasing pressure has come concern regarding the purpose of assessments, the nature of assessment

processes, and the implications for how the data are being used. In response, policymakers, practitioners, and researchers have

struggled to design and implement early childhood assessment systems that are valid, reliable, fair, and practical.

Assessing the State of State Assessments: Perspectives on Assessing Young Children is a compilation of perspectives on assessment

issues written by authors deeply involved in developing and implementing wide-scale assessment systems. Taken together, the

chapters provide practical and theoretical insights into four areas critical in developing such systems: design, instrumentation,

implementation, and data utilization. In the chapters, noted experts describe not only the challenges inherent in early childhood

assessment but also strategies for meeting those challenges.

SRASSA