Assessment in Early Childhood: Instruction-Focused Strategies to Support Response-to-Intervention Frameworks
This article provides a brief review of select early childhood (EC) assessment tools that demonstrate instructional validity. The article suggests methods to strengthen the instructional and intervention validity of EC assessments in the response-to-intervention frameworks context. The article addresses the current emphasis on aligning early learning guidelines, assessments, curricular practices, and accountability in early education and care systems and on revising EC assessment practices. Practitioners, researchers, and policymakers are increasingly interested in developing instruction-focused assessment strategies that have instructional and intervention validity. In particular, progress is being made in developing and validating universal screening assessments and progress-monitoring methods that can support the application of response-to-intervention models in EC settings.
This clearly articulated and developed article synthesizes important and relevant information about using and developing assessments to recognize, respond to, and monitor the learning of at-risk preschool-aged children. The article provides a sound review of measures that may help support an assessment system for this early childhood (EC) group. The article includes useful, substantive references, as well as a discussion on assessment types and trends for EC education.