From a sociocultural perspective to assessment, this study investigated parents' beliefs about formative assessment. When North Carolina (NC) received an Early Learning Challenge Grant, its Department of Public Instruction was funded to develop a kindergarten entry assessment. The department proposed the development of a kindergarten to third…

There is a need to delineate best practices for referring, assessing, and retaining students suspected of posttraumatic stress (PTS) and maladaptive grief (MG) in school-based treatment. Evidence-based risk-screening procedures should accurately include students who are appropriate for group treatment and exclude students who do not require…

An assessment from a holistic perspective considers the overall well-being of the adolescent and seeks to understand the adolescent's development and resiliency in relation to social relationships and their context and risks, given the association between these factors and the goal to promote each area. It is recommended that measures in the…

This compendium, a deliverable for "Assessments for Social, Emotional, and Academic Learning with Preschool/Elementary-School Children," focuses on tools to assess the social and emotional learning (SEL) of preschool and elementary school students (i.e., five- to ten-year-olds), along with aspects of the contexts in which they learn and…

Play assessment is gaining attention as a measure of the developing skills of young children. The procedures and methods of coding child behaviours vary considerably across researchers and practitioners. Because of this, definitive statements about the use of play assessment cannot be made without further research. The present study is an attempt…

This article proposes methods for asking analytic and systemic questions and using quantitative and qualitative data for documenting behavior change in young children receiving special education services. Suggestions are provided for developing data collection protocols that are valid but that are also manageable in practice. (Author/DB)

Behavior rating scales are important tools in the process of assessing students' emotional and behavioral needs. Best practices in behavioral assessment dictate that the perspectives of multiple informants (e.g., teacher, parent, youth) should be considered. Overall, agreement between multiple informants is modest at best and is especially low…

Discusses techniques that teachers and caregivers can use to assess the social development of young children. Indicates how anecdotal records, running records, checklists, rating scales, and standardized tests allow educators to determine the social competency of children and plan appropriate intervention strategies. (MDM)