There is considerable variability in the literacy assessments taken in Kindergarten through second grade, across schools and between multilingual learners and other students, and within students over time. This makes it difficult to study changes in students' acquisition of ELA skills in these formative years, or to evaluate policies and practices…

The Early Childhood Inventories Project (ECIP) was initiated to originate aptitude/achievement type inventories which could assess very specific behaviors of young children, particularly disadvantaged children. In practice these inventories are "non-specific" type criterion-referenced measures. This first aspect of the project involved…