Essential Conversations About Child Assessments During a Pandemic
By: Victoria Jones, The National Head Start Association’s Director of Data
This year is unlike any other we have ever experienced. As Head Start programs are forced to develop and implement Plan B for this school year (or maybe even Plan C or D…) one big topic of conversation is child assessments.
I have spoken to practitioners, and we all have a LOT of questions about child assessments. For example: Can we do child assessments this year? How do we collect that data? How do we use this data to inform instruction? Do these results even mean anything at all?
There are no clear answers to any of these questions, and the “right” answers won’t be the same for every program. However, after having all of these conversations, I have pulled together a set of questions and reflections that every leadership team should tackle in order to make the right decision for their programs, children, and families.
1. What is the purpose of child assessment?
As Head Start continues to evolve from a culture of compliance to a culture of improvement, this is a question every program will face. In a culture of compliance, the purpose of assessment is often lost. It becomes something that must be done to satisfy monitoring requirements, and the broader purpose may be missed.
Based on the Program Information Report (PIR), the vast majority of Head Start programs use formative child assessments, like Teaching Strategies Gold, DRDP, or COR Advantage.
By design, formative child assessments are used to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each child’s development in order to inform instruction. They may also provide additional details to inform referrals for extra services, but should not be used to exclude a child from a particular program.
In addition to information at the child level, the data from formative child assessments can be used in aggregate to drive instruction, professional development, and curricular decisions.
However, child assessments are not the only pieces of information that are important. Demographic data, screening results, teacher observations, and parent input are all critical pieces of information when it comes to understanding a child’s current developmental status and helping them grow.
2. How does the purpose evolve during a pandemic?
Depending on how your program plans to proceed this school year, the answer to this question will be different. And whether or not you used child assessment data to inform instruction previously, this year will be different.
As a leadership team, you need to ask yourself:
- What will instruction look like for us this year?
- What information do we need to know about children’s development in order to inform their instruction?
The first question, “What will instruction look like for us this year?” will depend on many, many factors. It might even change unexpectedly throughout the year. If you’d like some structured guidance, check out NHSA’s Destination Reopening Playbook.
For the second question, I recommend breaking it up into three pieces*:
- What do we need to know in the fall?
- What do we need to know in the winter?
- What do we need to know in the spring?
Start from scratch when you answer these questions. Now is the perfect time to reevaluate what you do and why, so don’t be constrained by what you’ve always done. In order to identify the strengths and weaknesses of an individual child’s development, and inform instruction for that child, what do you need to know at each of the three checkpoints?
Be as specific as possible here, thinking about each individual data point that you want to collect. For example, if you are doing virtual learning all year, do you want to assess a child’s ability to share? Or, if you are doing a hybrid model, do you want to assess a child’s ability to adapt to changing environments? This is up to you.
(*If your program uses different terms or timing based on your school year, replace fall, winter, and spring accordingly.)
3. How can we collect data?
Conducting child assessments this year is likely going to look significantly different than in previous years. For the many programs that collect observational data in the classroom every day, traditional data collection is no more.
If you are not operating in person, there are still several options available to you, each with its own strengths and weaknesses:
- Direct assessment of skills (eg. Through a digital tool, such as Cognitive Toybox, or during a socially-distanced visit with a teacher on the front lawn or at a public park)
- Remote observation of a group of students (eg. classroom Zoom call)
- Remote observation of an individual student (eg. 1-on-1 video call)
- Parent reporting and documentation
Consider carefully what you need to collect and how to do it, and do the best you can, acknowledging that “best” is likely going to involve a trade-off between the burden of time and quality. With this intentional decision-making though, you’ll easily be able to justify the assessment method you use.
4. Do these results even mean anything?
The child assessment results this year are likely going to come with a big asterisk next to them, but that doesn’t mean they’re not valuable. Instead of thinking about meeting the same goals you set for your program in the past, think about how you are going to interpret your results.
Just like you wouldn’t compare attendance rates during the pandemic to attendance rates before the pandemic (and after it if we ever get back to “normal”) you can’t compare assessment results the same way either.
You can, however, still use your results to inform instruction, professional development, and curricular decisions just like before. You will just need to interpret them within the context of what is happening now, not in the context of what used to happen.
For example, you may have some children whose social-emotional development is significantly behind. With changes to schedules, a lack of interaction with peers, and the uncertainty and stress around them, some children are bound to be struggling emotionally. Use assessment data and parent reports to identify these children and find ways to support them. Your teachers may simply need ideas of activities that can help, or they may need more training in social-emotional development. You may even need to adopt a specific social-emotional curriculum or tool for the year.
On the flip side, you may have some children who have strongly benefited emotionally with the increased attention and time at home with their parents. If these parents feel uncomfortable providing educational experiences at home, your focus on instruction may need to emphasize parents as their child’s first teachers and ideas or guidance for parents on how to integrate math, literacy, and science into their daily interactions with their children.
Child assessment this year simply will not look like those in past years. However, it is arguably more important than ever to be intentional about what you are doing, what data you are collecting, and how you can do what is best for children and families.
Despite there being many different models for reopening, nearly all of them will involve children staying at home more than usual. Further involving (and continually supporting!) parents and guardians as partners in the teaching, learning, and assessment process will strengthen the work that is done in Head Start and Early Head Start this year.
NHSA would love to know what you think of the above and what questions you still have. So please, share your feedback in the comments section! Or, head on over to The Block to discuss more details with your peers.
