Standards, Assessments and Readiness—Oh My! (Part 1)

Do states have the tools to measure whether young children and schools are meeting state standards for school readiness? Early Ed Watch gleaned some answers to this question during a session at the Early Childhood 2010 summit earlier this month.

In a session titled “Early Learning Standards, School Readiness and Assessments,” three presenters shared their findings as to how states are – or are not – using their early learning guidelines to inform assessments of whether children are ready for kindergarten.

What interested us most was the finding that states’ early learning guidelines don’t always match up with what is included on their readiness assessment. State guidelines are, in essence, a preschool version of the K-12 educational standards that define expectations for older students. A few examples of items that are sometimes included within a state's guidelines are that on entering kindergarten a child should be able to be recognize his name in print, follow simple rules, or participate in dramatic play activities.

The session was led by Jennifer Stedron, program director for the Education Program at  the National Conference of State Legislatures; Catherine Scott-Little, assistant professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Desireé Reddick-Head, technical assistance specialist at the National Child Care Information and Technical Assistance Center. Their analysis provides a lot of useful information, which will come in part 2 of this post tomorrow.

Readiness assessments are typically used to determine where children stand as they enter kindergarten. So if an assessment is not designed to measure a child’s status in relation to a particular guideline, it’s very difficult to know whether a child is, in fact, where the state thinks he should be – let alone whether his attendance in an early learning program might make a difference.

For example, seven states have broad guidelines that cover multiple domains, such as social-emotional growth or physical development, but they only assess how well children are prepared to start learning how to read. (These states are Alabama, Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas.) On the other hand, ten states have both broad guidelines and broad assessments. (They are Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Minnesota, Tennessee, Vermont, and Wyoming.)

The analysis by Stedron and Scott-Little looked only at the domains states included—it didn’t delve deeply into the content of the assessment questions. This spurred a question or two from the audience relating to the number of questions from each domain that should be included on the assessment to be considered “broad.” A participant from one of the 10 states listed as having both broad guidelines and a broad assessment cautioned that his state’s assessment, in fact, was mostly language/reading focused, with only one question from each of the other domains supposedly assessed.

Can one question really determine readiness for an entire domain? It’s doubtful. Though providing districts, principals and kindergarten teachers with some information about the students who will be arriving in their classrooms is better than no information at all. More importantly, what this analysis shows is how states’ readiness assessments may need to evolve and expand to catch up to broader ideas of what it means for a child to be served well in an early learning program and prepared to succeed in school.

Next up: Part 2 of this post, which will provide more details from the Early Childhood 2010 session on what states are – or are not – assessing when it comes to school readiness.