Collection of Early Childhood Assessment Resources

Writing from Day 4 of Massachusetts’ Early Educators Leadership Institute, I want to share a set of resources on early childhood assessment that Albert Wat (National Governors Association) and Linda Warren (Early Childhood Associates) have pulled together. In addition to general information on assessment, the resources are organized by 8 topics, including, for example: Finding Time…

“What Every School Can Learn From Preschools”

See National Public Radio’s story on a new report from the New America Foundation, Skills for Success: Supporting and Assessing Key Habits, Mindsets, and Skills PreK-12. From the NPR article: … the best tack is to hold entire schools accountable for creating atmospheres that instill or support these qualities. This can be done using tools like…

Kindergarten-Readiness Tests Gain Ground

This Education Week article discusses new kindergarten-readiness assessments, including advances and concerns. See comments by Kyle Snow and Libby Doggett in the excerpts below. All 3,500 kindergarten teachers in Maryland are using a new readiness assessment this year that rests on teachers’ observations of children’s work and play to build a detailed picture of what they…

Early Learning Assessment Literacy

See The Early Learning Assessment Literacy Challenge at New America EdCentral for an article on the effective use of assessments in early childhood education. The article includes a number of embedded links to useful guidance documents, including Early Childhood Assessment: Implementing Effective Practice. From the EdCentral article: “A strong consensus among education experts supports the notion that one…

Communities of Practice in Lowell: Supporting Family Child Care and Center-based Providers

As discussed last week, there are multiple entry points for understanding Lowell’s Birth-Third work—the Leadership Alignment Team, the use of the CLASS tool, the emerging school readiness agenda—but a good place to start is with Lowell’s communities of practice. Supporting family childcare providers is a logistically more challenging and less common component of Birth-Third initiatives.[1]…

Building a Common Vision of Quality across the Birth-Third Continuum

Birth-Third projects often begin with a focus on aligning community-based preschool and kindergarten. For the leaders of Lowell’s Birth-Third initiative, it was important from the outset that their project be broader in scope, spanning the Birth-Third continuum by developing meaningful roles for family childcare providers, community-based preschools, and elementary schools. Lowell’s leaders wanted to build…