A growing understanding of the importance of children's earliest years has led to an increasing desire to measure early childhood development (ECD) outcomes. There are now nearly 150 tools for measuring ECD outcomes internationally, which can make it challenging to choose an appropriate measurement tool for a given measurement effort. This…

This article highlights the practices of administrators and master teachers who are trying to balance the needs for accountability, prescribed curriculum, and learning standards with a broader view of education that gives equal importance to skills not so easily quantified by standardized tests. The author makes a case for the use of careful…

This commentary highlights the work of the Collaborative for Building After-School Systems (CBASS), a collaborative of mature, city and county-wide nonprofit OST intermediaries, to develop and adopt common youth-, program- and system-level measures that are easy and cost-effective for local systems to implement. By agreeing to adopt and publicly…

The Goal 1 Technical Planning Subgroup proposed an early childhood assessment system that involved assessment of children before they entered kindergarten, at the time of entrance into kindergarten, and during the kindergarten year. The report that contained the proposal, and requests for feedback, were disseminated to nearly 1,000 individuals and…

The "Ages and Stages Questionnaires," a parent-completed developmental monitoring system, is described, and various strategies for using the system to identify young children with developmental delays are compared. Strategies include mail-out, home visit, on-site (completed by either parent with assistance from service provider),…

This technical report presents issues related to defining and applying accountability systems for young children, including those with disabilities. It notes that reaching shared perspectives on definitions of accountability systems and their constituents remains complicated by the number of levels to which such systems can apply (e.g., child-,…

This article provides a brief overview of general outcome measurement and its potential for assessment of continuous progress in early childhood education. It describes an eight-step research and development process for the generating and evaluating of individual growth and development indicators. These indicators are adaptable across children,…

This report describes the psychometric characteristics and related methodology of the 9-month data collection of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in the Institute of Education Sciences, in collaboration with several…

As demand for after-school services has grown, the public has responded with support for growth in federal, state, and local funding for these services. As in other successful grassroots movements, this high level of support is evident across groups with diverse objectives. Some after-school advocates are mainly interested in increasing the supply…

This comprehensive guide to alternative, authentic assessment in early childhood education provides discussions of the most current research and practical ways to integrate assessments into teaching. It shows assessment as a process that teachers can use in their own classrooms, using the latest procedures, such as portfolios, standards,…

CONTRARY TO THE OPINION OF MANY PEOPLE, PROJECT HEADSTART (HS) IS NOT A STABLE AND UNIFORM PROGRAM WHICH DEALS WITH AN EASILY DEFINABLE POPULATION. THERE ARE, THEREFORE, SEVERAL PROBLEMS WHICH EXIST IN CONNECTION WITH EVALUATIVE RESEARCH CONCERNED WITH HS. IN ORDER TO PROVIDE GUIDANCE IN PROGRAM PLANNING, THIS RESEARCH SEEKS TO DESCRIBE POTENTIAL…

Describes issues which are common to all research methodologies and some that were unique to the assessment techniques used in the Child Development Project (CDP) in San Ramon, California. Looks at the limited amount of time given assessments and the "fluid" nature of measurements. Notes that CDP issues involved observations,…

This article discusses the importance of obtaining developmental history in the screening and diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders in children. Steps for obtaining developmental history are described and general guidelines are provided. Instruments for collecting developmental history and diagnostic indicators for autism spectrum disorders are…

This article outlines a five-step process for use in selecting and adopting curriculum-based measures designed to facilitate a linked system approach and promote family-centered, collaborative, early childhood intervention practices. Within a linked system approach, assessment information guides the development of goals and objectives, which in…

Cell phones afford a set of distinctive advantages for gathering information on daily patterns of behavior, establishing relationships, maintaining contact, and providing professional expertise to participants in a wide array of programs, including intervention, treatment, and service. This paper presents new findings about innovative applications…