School readiness has become a near obsession in this country. Although
no agreed-upon definition of readiness exists, children are now being
asked to take standardized "readiness" tests as early as the
beginning of first grade. This obsession with readiness has even gone
below preschool and kindergarten. Recent years have witnessed an explosion
of interest in infants' developing brains. Books and magazines are
filled with information on how to "grow the best brains possible."
Though some of this information is quite good, these publications fuel
the view that infants' brains are essentially moldable as long as
you intervene early enough, and that if you don't intervene early
enough, you've missed the boat.
The critics of this interpretation of brain research complain that brain
development is not over at age three, and they are correct. However, that
does not free us from an obligation to nurture, support, and seek to advance
the development of children during those years. What we do during the
first three years is extremely important, even though much more growth
and development is still to come.
An essential element of good practice in the first three years is assessment.
Assessment should give a picture of the whole child, not just splinter
skills and milestones, and it should help to differentiate and expand
parents' and providers' perception of their babies. In early
childhood, assessment is not the same thing as testing. Assessment should
engage us in a process of ongoing discovery. It should be viewed as a
collaborative process of observation and analysis that involves formulating
questions, gathering information, sharing observations, and making interpretations
to form new questions.
Functional Assessment
What does an assessment like this look like at a practical level? My colleagues
and I make two assumptions in our work on new assessment tools. The first
is that skills and behaviors that have functional applications should
be the centerpiece of early intervention. A second is that positive relationships
between infants and their primary care providers, both within and outside
the family, advance development most effectively. In short, our overall
purpose is to enhance relationships by strengthening infant/toddler competence
and increasing parental and caregiver knowledge, information, and skills.
We can do this through functional assessments.
Functional assessments focus on everyday, naturally occurring behaviors
that are easily recognizable. In a functional approach, children do not
have to score at a certain level or exhibit a certain type of behavior
to achieve a certain acceptable score. Instead, we're trying to help
parents and caregivers appreciate children's abilities in the first
three years of life and think about how that relates to a whole range
of other developmental indicators.
Functional assessments help families and service providers set goals.
They also enable families and providers to work together to document accomplishments
and identify areas in need of further development. This type of assessment
provides a vehicle for families and service providers to learn to observe
the child and contribute to the evaluation of his or her growth. It links
intervention with assessment, programs with families, and families with
young children's developing competence.
Returning to school readiness, we must begin to think of readiness as
much more than a few skills seen in the first few weeks of kindergarten.
Consistent with ZERO TO THREE's "Heart Start Indicators"
described in the 1992 Head Start Report, The Emotional Foundations
of School Readiness, the characteristics that equip children to
come to school with knowledge of how to learn include confidence, curiosity,
intentionality, self-control, and the ability to relate, communicate,
and cooperate. To attain these readiness skills, children need a sense
of self that can only be developed over time and through interactions
with trustworthy and caring adults. We believe that functional assessments
can contribute to these kinds of relationships.
We
have
reached a critical moment in the life of Head Start. Besieged by those
who advocate a downward extension of K-12 testing practices, Early Head
Start must remain strong in its commitment to children, families, and communities.
It must remain committed to maximizing meaning in all aspects of
its activities, and particularly in assessment. If we can use assessment data
to enhance the child' s primary context the family then
we will have engaged in something meaningful something
that will open the doors to lifelong learning for untold numbers of children.
Sam Meisels is Professor of Education at the University of Michigan-Ann
Arbor. T: 734-763-7306, E: smeisels@umich.edu.
Practices to avoid in assessments:
- Young children should never be challenged during assessment
by being separated from their parents or familiar caregivers.
- An unfamiliar examiner should never assess young children.
- Assessments that are limited to areas that are easily measurable,
such as certain motor or cognitive skills, should not be considered
complete.
- Formal tests or tools should not be the cornerstone of an assessment
of an infant or young child. (Greenspan & Meisels, 1996)
Functional assessments focus on everyday, naturally occurring, practical
behaviors and accomplishments that are:
- Easily recognized by parents and service providers,
- Central to the emergence of infant and toddler competence,
- Learned and assessed in context,
- Form the fabric of the relationships between infants and their
primary caregivers, and
- Serve to elicit, support, and extend children's skills,
abilities, and accomplishments.
