How can preschool childrens literacy development be faithfully assessed and educators held accountable?
Monitoring and assessing children’s early literacy development is an important part of a comprehensive early childhood program. A sound assessment program can be used to monitor children’s development and learning, to guide a teacher’s planning and decision making, to identify children who might benefit from special services, and to report to and communicate with others. In addition to the ongoing, day-by-day assessments that link closely to the early childhood curriculum, there is a growing trend toward the use of child assessments for program accountability. These assessments, in which early literacy is often a major component, reflect an increasingly high-stakes climate in which preschool programs are required to demonstrate effectiveness (often on standardized measures) in improving school readiness and creating positive child outcomes. Unfortunately, assessment results related to early literacy are sometimes interpreted to be representative of all aspects of the instructional prog
