3-055 - Resources for Addressing the Challenges in Measuring Early Childhood Settings and Development

Session Type: Federal Agency Symposium

Integrative Statement

Development during early childhood is particularly challenging to measure in valid and reliable ways because it occurs rapidly and often non-linearly. Moreover, context – specifically, relationships and environment - are especially salient for very young children’s development, meaning they should be taken into account as important predictors of development. The goal of this session is to give examples of the federal government’s recent efforts in developing measurement strategies to better capture development in early childhood through child assessments and through assessments of children’s environments. We highlight four measures to describe individual child development and contexts of care from infancy to kindergarten entry: the Individual Growth and Development Indicators (IGDIs) for Infants and Toddlers, federally-funded state-developed Kindergarten Entry Assessments (KEAs), the Quality of Caregiver-Child Interactions for Infants and Toddlers (Q-CCIIT), and the Implementation and Cost of High-Quality Early Care and Education (ECE-ICHQ). Presenters will discuss the process of measure development, federal agency interests and priorities, validation results to date, implementation experiences, potential research and practical uses for each of the measures, and the publicly available resources related to each of these measures through ed.gov and acf.hhs.gov. Next steps, future directions, and an open discussion of measurement in early childhood will follow the presentations. The session is a collaboration between researchers in the Department of Education and the Administration for Children and Families.

Sub Unit

• Federal Agency Sessions

Chairs

• Nina Philipsen Hetzner, Administration for Children and Families

• Elizabeth Shuey, Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services

Individual Presentations

• Individual Growth and Development Indicators for Infants and Toddlers - Presenting Author: Amy Sussman, IES, ED

• Teacher Experiences Implementing Kindergarten Entry Assessments - Presenting Author: Erica Lee, U.S. Department of Education

• Quality of Caregiver-Child Interactions for Infants and Toddlers - Presenting Author: Ann C Rivera, Office of Planning, Research & Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families; Amy Madigan, OPRE, ACF

• Assessing the Implementation and Cost of High-Quality Early Care and Education - Presenting Author: Meryl Yoches Barofsky, Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation