In 2017, the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) in the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) funded Mathematica to conduct the Infant and Toddler Teacher and Caregiver Competencies (ITTCC) project. The project aims to examine existing efforts across states, institutions of higher education, professional organizations, and…

For children age birth to five, physical, cognitive, linguistic, and social-emotional growth and development occur at a rapid pace. While all children in this age range may not reach developmental milestones (e.g., smiling, saying first words, taking first steps) at the same time, development that does not happen within an expected timeframe can…

No one has a bigger stake in teaching effectiveness than students. Nor are there any better experts on how teaching is experienced by its intended beneficiaries. Only recently have many policymakers and practitioners come to recognize that--when asked the right questions, in the right ways--students can be an important source of information on the…

Early identification of social-emotional behavioral problems in infants and preschoolers is critical. Nine parent-report and caregiver/teacher-report instruments measuring preschool social-emotional behavioral problems and strengths are reviewed. Advantages to the use of parent-report and caregiver/teacher-report instruments are that they are easy…

Discusses the need for a method to measure computer user abilities, and presents an instrument that identifies individuals' technical, modeling, and applications skills. An evaluation of the instrument in terms of validity and reliability is reported, and applications in user education research are suggested. (12 references) (CLB)

Assessed the reliability and validity of an instrument designed to assess the extent of alcohol and drug use. Factors in a school or community contributing to use of alcohol and drugs are identified. Uses of the results for school and community planning are included. (Author/JAC)

Current status and new developments in behavioral assessment for clinicians and researchers are discussed. The field of behavioral assessment has attained a recognizable identity in recent years. Behavioral assessment can be defined as the identification of meaningful response units and their controlling variables for the purposes of…

The Speech-Language Pathologist Stress Inventory is a 48-item questionnaire adapted from the Teacher Stress Inventory. Factor analyses of the responses of 626 speech-language pathologists revealed 4 stress source factors: bureaucratic restrictions, time and workload management, lack of professional supports, and instructional limitations. (DB)

Increasingly neuropsychologists are under pressure, particularly in child custody and personal injury litigation, to justify the validity of the tests upon which their assessments are based. Reviews research on the validity of clinical opinions based on tests and concludes that test scores must be used in conjunction with life history and current…

In order to collect the necessary information on various practices and devices used in school climate assessment, 22 of the 39 school improvement projects mentioned in the Miles and Kaufman directory of effective schools programs were selected for a survey. A questionnaire was used to collect the primary data. Each program was asked for copies of…

A new psychometric instrument for measuring the impact of divorce on elementary school age children was developed: the Child's Report of the Impact of Separation by Parents (CRISP). This structured projective test was specifically designed to assess children's postdivorce stress/adjustment. An initial version of the CRISP was administered to 99…

This study, involving five experienced and trained speech language pathologists, categorized the elicited imitations of five profoundly and five severely prelingually hearing-impaired subjects using the Phonetic Level Evaluation. Failure to obtain acceptably high levels of reliability suggests that this measure may not yet be an accurate and…

This article discusses issues relevant to the clinical assessment of parent-child interaction in the context of early intervention and clinical infant services. Issues discussed include factors contributing to the call for parent-child assessments, reliability and validity of parent-child assessment instruments, and interpretability of data…

A vital aspect of music education often left unattended in preservice education is testing and evaluation. Discussed are ways to measure musical achievement and aptitude and factors to consider when selecting a test for student evaluation. Recommended achievement and aptitude tests are described. (RM)

This kit contains materials necessary to administer the Cognitive Assessment System (CAS), an assessment battery designed to evaluate cognitive processing in children 5 through 17 years of age. Derived from the Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, and Successive (PASS) theory, the four processing areas comprise the four scales that make up the CAS.…