8-4 Standardized Screening and Assessment Instruments

This section talks more specifically about standardized screening and assessment instruments.

Knowing how standardized tools measure children’s development will help you better understand and interpret results for children in your own programs.

Early childhood educators can gain some information from standardized screening and assessment instruments that are administered the same way with all children. These types of instruments are just one tool in the toolbox for learning about the children with whom we work.

There are generally two-types of standardized screening and assessment instruments; one is referred to as norm-referenced. The other is known as criterion-referenced.

Norm-referenced Assessments

Norm-referenced instruments usually compare the child being assessed with a group of many children, or a normative population. The instrument can compare a variety of qualities—how they respond to instruction, answer a question or complete a task. The normative group’s behavior determines what is typical for children at that age. So, the most correct behaviors a child displays during the assessment yield an age equivalent comparison.

Standardized evaluation results based on norm-referenced screenings and assessments are often used for placement into special education services.

Norm-referenced data is often graphically represented by a bell curve. It shows comparisons between student performance. Most children score somewhere in the middle of the bell curve. Some children score worse than that, while others score better. Student scores are often placed on a bell curve to see whether they conform to what is typical for most other students of the same age.

However, educators must know the specific characteristics of the children used to create the dataset represented by the bell curve in order to know whether to expect the children they are working with to perform similarly.

It is important to know the population of children the screening or assessment tool references so that it will yield valid results. Or in other words, does the assessment measure what it is supposed to measure?

With standardized assessments, assessors compare children’s performance to the average performance of other children of the same age. With children who are MLLs, this sort of comparison often leads to inaccurate and unfair conclusions. This is because what is considered the “average” is frequently based on White, typically developing, monolingual English-speaking children from middle income backgrounds.

Criterion-referenced assessments

Criterion-referenced assessments measure student performance against a fixed set of predetermined criteria. Assessors use this tool to place children on a developmental continuum of widely held age-appropriate expectations for specific behaviors. Some criterion-referenced assessments do not assign a developmental age; they just show what a child seems to know and what they are doing at the time.

Criterion-referenced assessments often offer clear graphics to help families see the progress their child is making in the classroom.

Depending on the information sought, screening and assessment instruments may offer both criterion- and normed-referenced information. Again, norm-referenced information should be used with caution when applied to children on whom the assessment was NOT normed.

Validity

Educators must consider a screening or assessment tool’s validity. Does it measure the areas it purports to measure? For example, if a tool is designed to measure cognitive development, it should not tell you about a child’s ability to walk, run, and jump. Educators also must consider whether the screening or assessment tool is measuring skills in one or more languages.

Reliability

Educators must consider the reliability of the instrument. For instance, would the results be similar if the child was re-tested later in a different setting?

Choosing an Assessment

Educators must look closely at screening and assessment instruments to see if they have been tested for reliability and validity with all children in their classrooms. Many manuals say there is “general evidence” that their instrument is valid and reliable when considering all children in the sample. This does not mean there is specific evidence that the instrument is valid and reliable for specific groups of children not represented in the sample.

Educators will probably be able to find screening and assessment instruments that have been translated into Spanish. The manual should state whether they are valid and reliable for the specific population with whom you are working. Educators need to find out where the family comes from. This provides more specific information about the dialect of Spanish they speak.

Very few early childhood screening and assessment instruments are valid and reliable to use with languages other than Spanish. Teachers should use a combination of written observations collected over time in conjunction with information from the child’s family in order to make screening and assessment decisions.

The Office of Head Start has a website with many valuable resources on appropriate ways to assess all young children, including children who are multilingual learners.

• Birth to 5: Watch Me Thrive! A Compendium of Screening Measures for Young Children [PDF]
• Learning from Assessment Toolkit [Website]

First and foremost, educators must consider the special circumstances of multilingual learners when planning and implementing screening and assessment tools and procedures. Much is at stake in determining what conceptual and linguistic knowledge a child brings so the educator can work with them and their family to build on their funds of knowledge.

Refer to the handout Common Screening and Assessment Errors. Are any of them familiar to you?