Lesson 7: Assessment of Young Children with Special Needs

Attention

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this lesson's material, students will be able to

  • Recognize key assessment terms and match with the correct definition.
  • Explain how professionals ensure that assessment instruments and processes are culturally appropriate, sensitive, and responsive.
  • Describe the difference between assessment to determine eligibility for services and assessment for program planning purposes.
  • Describe the importance of including families in the assessment process and strategies professionals use to include families in the assessment process.
  • Explain why it is important to monitor and evaluate the progress of young children with delays or disabilities.

Teaching

Assessment of young children with delays or disabilities is a comprehensive process with overlapping components rather than a single procedure. Assessment must be useful, acceptable, authentic, collaborative, convergent, equitable, sensitive, and congruent. Assessment information is gathered to be used in making a decision in one or more of the following areas:

  • Screening – is further assessment needed?
  • Eligibility – Is the child eligible for early childhood special education services?
  • Program planning – What are the child's educational needs and baseline skills?
  • Progress monitoring – Is the child making progress over time?

Who conducts the assessment?

Most of the time, teams conduct assessments. The two common types of teams are:

  • Multidisciplinary Team – The involvement of two or more professionals from different disciplines in EI/ECSE activities
  • Transdisciplinary Team This is the type of model used in EI/ECSE

What do people use to conduct an assessment?

Teams use several different "testing instruments" to conduct assessment. Though there are many, the most common instruments are:

  • Standardized Testing Instrument The child performs a specific skill while the teacher observes and grades the child's performance.
  • Norm-Referenced Tests The child takes a test and the test is then interpreted in relation to the performance of a "norming" group. A "norming group" is a group of peers of the same age group who have taken the same test. Provides a score that is relative to other children in a particular group
  • Criterion-Referenced Assessments The child takes the test and the evaluator determines whether a child's performance meets an established criteria or a certain level of mastery within various developmental domains
  • Curriculum-Based Assessments Curriculum referenced instruments are used to interpret a child's performance in relation to specific curriculum content

Most assessment instruments for young children seek to measure development in one or more of the interrelated skill domains:

  • Cognitive skills
  • Social skills
  • Motor skills
  • Adaptive skills
  • Communication skills

Limitations of Assessment Instruments

Assessments are not perfect. There are several limitations you should be aware of. They are:

  • There are relatively small number of assessment instruments available that are appropriate for young children with disabilities
  • Most standardized tests are designed for children experiencing typical development and will not reflect the abilities and needs of children with disabilities.
  • Assessments rely on sensitivity to the age of the child and the nature of the child's disability or delay.

According to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) Position Statement (Approved Nov.2003) provides the following Guidelines for Assessing Young Children: Make ethical, appropriate, valid, and reliable assessment a central part of all early childhood programs. To assess young children's strengths, progress, and needs, use assessment methods that are developmentally appropriate, culturally and linguistically responsive, tied to children's daily activities, supported by professional development, inclusive of families, and connected to specific, beneficial purposes:

  1. making sound decisions about teaching and learning,
  2. identifying significant concerns that may require focused intervention for individual children, and
  3. helping programs improve their educational and developmental interventions.

Indicators of Effectiveness

Ethical principles guide assessment practices. Ethical principles underlie all assessment practices. Young children are not denied opportunities or services, and decisions are not made about children on the basis of a single assessment. Assessment instruments should be

  • Used for their intended purposes.
  • Used in ways consistent with the purposes for which they were designed. If the assessments will be used for additional purposes, they are validated for those purposes.
  • Appropriate for ages and other characteristics of children being assessed Assessments are designed for and validated for use with children whose ages, cultures, home languages, socioeconomic status, abilities and disabilities, and other characteristics are similar to those of the children with whom the assessments will be used.
  • In compliance with professional criteria for quality.
  • Valid and reliable.
  • Aligned with early learning standards, with program goals, and with specific emphases in the curriculum.
About professional standards

Accepted professional standards of quality are the basis for selection, use, and interpretation of assessment instruments, including screening tools. NAEYC and NAECS/SDE support and adhere to the measurement standards set forth in 1999 by the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the American Psychological Association (APA) and the National Center for Measurement in Education. When individual norm-referenced tests are used, they meet these guidelines.

How are assessments used?

Assessment evidence is used to understand and improve learning. Assessments lead to improved knowledge about children. This knowledge is translated into improved curriculum implementation and teaching practices. Assessment helps early childhood professionals understand the learning of a specific child or group of children; enhance overall knowledge of child development; improve educational programs for young children while supporting continuity across grades and settings; and access resources and supports for children with specific needs.

Assessment evidence is gathered from realistic settings and situations that reflect children's actual performance. To influence teaching strategies or to identify children in need of further evaluation, the evidence used to assess young children's characteristics and progress is derived from real-world classroomor family contexts that are consistent with children's culture, language, and experiences. Assessments use multiple sources of evidence gathered over time. The assessment system emphasizes repeated, systematic observation, documentation, and other forms of criterion- or performance-oriented assessment using broad, varied, and complementary methods with accommodations for children with disabilities.

More on effective assessment

  • Screening is always linked to follow-up. When a screening or other assessment identifies
    • concerns, appropriate follow-up, referral, or other intervention is used. Diagnosis or labeling is never the result of a brief screening or one-time assessment.
  • Use of individually administered, norm-referenced tests is limited. The use of formal standardized testing and norm-referenced assessments of young children is limited to situations in which such measures are appropriate and potentially beneficial, such as identifying potential disabilities.
  • Staff and families are knowledgeable about assessment. Staff are given resources that support their knowledge and skills about early childhood assessment and their ability to assess children in culturally and linguistically appropriate ways. Pre-service and in-service training builds teachers' and administrators' "assessment literacy," creating a community that sees assessment as a tool to improve outcomes for children. Families are part of this community, with regular communication, partnership, and involvement.

Screening Young Children One of the first screenings experienced by infants and their families is the Apgar Scale. Infants are screened at one-minute and five- minute intervals following their birth in the following areas: (a) heart rate, (b) respiration, (c) reflex response, (d) muscle tone, and (e) color Determining Eligibility for Services Watch the following video to see how one County follows the process.

Key Terms & Definitions

  • Reliability refers to the consistency or dependability of an assessment instrument which is Important for making generalizations about children's learning and development
  • Validity measures the extent to which an assessment instrument measures what it was designed to measure
  • Authentic Assessment is the he process of observing, recording, collecting, and otherwise documenting what children do and how they do it for the purpose of making educational or intervention decisions
  • Observational Assessment
  • Play-based Assessment
  • Interviews
  • Culture Bias
  • *Portfolio Assessment is a systematic and organized record of children's work and behaviors that is collected at regular intervals that can be used for qualitative comparisons of their knowledge, skills, efforts, and progress over time.
    • *The video is designed for older children, however it also applies to younger children.
  • Naturalistic Assessment is a basic skill that is required on a frequent basis in the natural environment. The best place to determine if a child has a functional skill is in the environment(s) where he or she uses that skill. It is Increasingly being used to replace traditional assessment practices for young children with delays or disabilities

Assessment

Lesson 7 Quiz

  1. Match the term to the definition.
    Terms Definitions
    Apgar scale A systematic process of gathering recordings and analysis Of young children's behavior in real-life situations and familiar settings within the environment.
    Assessment The extent to which an assessment instrument measures what it is designed to measure.
    Authentic assessment When a professional comes in contact with a child, he or she suspects of having a delay or disability and recommends further assessment.
    Child find A screening procedure for newborns given at one minute and again at five minutes after birth to measure heart rate, respiration, reflex response, muscle tone and color.
    Criterion-referenced assessments A basic skill that is required on a frequent basis in the natural environment (toileting, eating, asking for help).
    Culturally biased assessment A form of assessment that can be used to gather information from families or other caregivers about the a reason which to focus during the assessment process: specific information about a child, family concerns and priorities and resources
    Developmental age score A process that addresses a program's process in achieving overall outcomes and effectiveness.
    Developmental domain A child's behavior that is exhibited while putting specific skills into action and is interpreted in the relation to the performance of a group of peers of the same age group who have previously taken the same test.
    Eligibility A format that can be followed to decide the skill areas on which to focus and the specific skills to be observed during the assessment.
    Functional skill A type of assessment approach that is based on the premise that the behavior of young children must be observed in natural settings during real-life situations.
    Interviews A process of collecting information about a child's progress, the family's satisfaction with services, and overall program effectiveness.
    Multidisciplinary team The key skill areas addressed in early childhood special education curriculum: cognitive, motor, communication, social and adaptive skills.
    Norm-referenced tests System of locating children who may have delays or disabilities and who need further testing to determine if they are eligible for early intervention /early childhood special education services.
    Observational assessment A type of authentic assessment system that provides a purposeful and comprehensive overview of a child's accomplishments.
    Performance The result from a norm-referenced test for children ages birth to five.
    Play-based assessment The consistency or dependability of an assessment instrument over time and across observers.
    Portfolio assessment A type of measure used to determine whether a child's performance meets an established criterion or a certain level of mastery within various developmental domains or subject area.
    Program evaluation A type of measure that provides information about how a child is developing in relation to a larger group of children the same age.
    Progress monitoring A systematic observational procedure for observing children during play to determine their level of development.
    Protocol A comprehensive assessment process to determine if a child meets the criteria to be eligible for early intervention or early childhood special education services.
    Referrals An assessment procedure designed to determine, from within a large population of children, those who need to be referred for further assessment in one or more areas of development.
    Reliability A type of teaming model utilized in delivering services to young children with special needs. The approach refers to the involvement of two or more professionals from different disciplines in early childhood special education.
    Screening The process of gathering information for the purpose of making a decision about children with known or suspected disabilities in the areas of screening, diagnosis, eligibility, program planning, and/or progress monitoring and evaluation.
    Standardized tests A type of test used during formal assessments in which an individual child's performance is interpreted in relation to the performance of a group of peers from the same age group.
  2. How can educators ensure that assessment instruments and processes are culturally appropriate, sensitive, and responsive?
  3. What is the difference between assessment to determine eligibility for services and assessment for program planning purposes?
  4. What are the advantages of including families in the assessment process?
  5. What strategies educators can use to include families in the assessment process?
  6. Why is it important to monitor and evaluate the progress of young children with delays or disabilities?

Lesson 7  Discussion

Chapter 4 discusses the assessment process early childhood educators use in practice. You have likely encountered one or more parts of the assessment process before either in your educational or work experiences. For this discussion, reflect on your experiences with the assessment process . They can be either experiences from screening, evaluation, and/or assessment. When putting together your response, think about how eligibility was determined, how the child’s environment impacted the process. Also, do you think the child/family culture impacted the process? How so?