Longitudinal Evidence on the Predictive Validity of the International Development and Early Learning Assessment (IDELA)

• In Event: Validity for What? Challenges and Opportunities in Direct Assessment of Young Children Internationally and at Scale

Abstract

With the inclusion of early childhood development targets in the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), there is increased focus on young children’s development and readiness for school globally. Specifically, SDG 4.2 aims to “ensure all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education” (United Nations, 2015). In this framework, early childhood care and education (ECCE) programs are considered a mechanism for improving children’s foundational learning to support progression through later schooling.

‘School readiness’ is typically conceptualized as a set of competencies across multiple domains, including academic, behavioral and social-emotional development (Snow & Van Hemel, 2008; Yoshikawa & Kabay, 2015). Progress toward SDG 4.2 is being measured by both the proportion of children enrolled in ECCE services, as well as their development across multiple domains (i.e., health, learning and psychosocial well-being) (United Nations, 2015). As a result, there has been a call for global assessments that capture the multiple domains of children’s early learning and development. Multi-dimensional assessments of early learning and development and school readiness operate under the assumption that they are indicators of children’s ability to succeed later in school. These assessments are then used to gauge the types of early supports children need to remain developmentally on track and ultimately thrive in school. The landscape and use of these multi-dimensional developmental assessments is expanding, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), but little information exists about whether these assessments reliably predict children’s educational outcomes in primary school or beyond (Fernald et al., 2017).

This study uses longitudinal data from Ghana to investigate the predictive validity of a commonly used multidimensional school readiness assessment, the International Development and Early Learning Assessment (IDELA). Specifically, we explore how children’s scores on different domains of the IDELA, collected while they were enrolled in an early childhood education program, predict their reading and math skills as measured by the Early Grade Reading and Mathematics Assessments (EGRA and EGMA, respectively) two and a half years later. We aim to identify whether the IDELA can be useful in monitoring systems for education, as well as to identify academic and non-academic skills and behaviors that may be learned or improved through experiences prior to school entry.

The results provide the first evidence to date on how a direct assessment of children’s school readiness skills in pre-primary school predict future learning outcomes in a sub-Saharan African country. Overall, we found significant and meaningful associations between IDELA scores in ECE and early primary school academic skills. We found that even the most distal IDELA measure was a significant predictor of academic skills over two and a half years later, and the relations were stronger with more proximal measures. We also found that all domains of early development were predictive of later academic performance, but that the specific domains of Emergent Literacy and Emergent Numeracy were the strongest predictors of EGRA and EGMA.

Authors

• Lauren Pisani, University College London (UCL)
  Presenting Author

• Jonathan Seiden, Harvard University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sharon Wolf, University of Pennsylvania
  Non-Presenting Author