The Challenge of Assessing Children: One Migrant Head Start's Story

East Coast Migrant Head Start Project (ECMHSP), like every other Head Start program in this country, is actively engaged in meeting the challenge of implementing the legislative changes concerning Head Start program and child outcomes. These include, "establishing additional results-based educational performance standards and performance measures, and adapting these standards and measures for use by programs in their self-assessments..." (ACYF-IM-HS-00-18, 8/10/00).

This challenge offers us an opportunity to take a step back and look at what we already are doing to measure child outcomes, and what still needs to be done. It entails reviewing our current screening and assessment system, particularly our assessment tool and process. For many years, ECMHSP centers have used the Denver II to screen all children, and the Early Learning Accomplishment Profile (E-LAP: ages birth to 3 years) and Learning Accomplishment Profile (LAP: ages 3 to 6 years) for ongoing assessment and to track children's progress across a broad range of skills. We are asking ourselves a specific question: Does the E-LAP/LAP provide adequate child outcome information? If not, what other assessment tool does?

This, of course, raises other questions: What criteria will we use to evaluate different assessment tools? How would a change of assessment affect our continuity system? What are the pros and cons of changing our assessment system? If we change our assessment tool, how will that impact programs that integrate the E-LAP/LAP into their curriculum framework?

ECMHSP has established a Child Assessment Committee composed of ECMHSP, delegate agency, and center staff to address these and other issues and questions. This article provides background information about ECMHSP, describes work the committee has accomplished, and explains the questions and issues under discussion.

Who We Are

ECMHSP was established in 1974 to provide continuity of Head Start services to the children of migrant farm workers and their families along the East Coast of the United States. It has evolved over the years from a small, two-center program in Florida, to a multi-state, multi-agency, multi-center operation. Currently, ECMHSP contracts with 20 delegate agencies in 12 states (AL, DE, FL, GA, ME, MD, NC, NJ, NY, PA, SC, and VA). There are a total of 88 centers serving over 8,000 infants, toddlers, and preschoolers in full-day programs.

The majority of ECMHSP children and families are Spanish-speaking families from Mexico, Texas, and Puerto Rico. ECMHSP programs also serve children and families from Haiti, Guatemala, Canada (Mixtec Indians who cross the Canadian border into Maine and work in the blueberry barrens), and the United States.

Programs seek staff members who speak the children's languages. Parents often are hired as teacher's aides for this reason. Many of the families live in Florida from October through May and travel up-stream after the agricultural season is over to work in northern states. Centers open and close with the comings and goings of migrant families, rather than operating on a school year schedule. Thus, ECMHSP programs share children as their families move from place to place to do agricultural work. Many of the children come into Head Start as infants and stay within the ECMHSP system until they transition into kindergarten.

What We Do: Screening and Assessment

Within this context, ECMHSP has developed and implemented a screening/assessment system to provide–

• Important information about children's competencies and skill development;
  
  
• Opportunities for family involvement and input;
  
  
• Information for use by classroom teachers in individualizing learning activities and creating classroom lesson plans; and
  
  
• A communication and continuity link between all the centers in the ECMHSP system (for E-LAP/LAP).

All children are screened within the first two weeks of enrollment using the Denver II instrument. The first E-LAP/LAP assessment is completed in the next month. The results, along with family input, are used to create individual Child Activity Plans (CAPs) for infants, toddlers, or preschoolers.

The CAP identifies learning objectives and related classroom activities in the following areas of development (similar to the Domains in the Head Start Outcomes Framework): language, cognitive, gross motor, fine motor, pre-writing (only in the LAP), social-emotional, and self-help. Information from the CAPs is used to develop lesson plans for toddler and preschool classrooms. E-LAPs/LAPs are updated monthly, as are the children's CAPs. Programs that are open for eight weeks or less only use Denver II screenings.

ECMHSP uses the E-LAP/LAP as a key part of its communication and continuity system. Classroom teachers assess each child each month and record the information on two identical E-LAP/LAP forms. One copy is provided to families when they inform the center they are leaving; the other goes in the child's records folder, which contains education, health, and family information.

Children's records are sent back to the ECMHSP main office when they leave a center. When families come to the next ECMHSP center, they give their child's E-LAP/LAP form to the classroom teachers. The center also requests the child's records from the ECMHSP main office. This information helps teachers at the new center, as they continue the assessment process and monthly updates. Thus, the E-LAP/LAP form is a communication tool that allows centers to provide continuity of education services as children move.

ECMHSP chose to use the Denver II screening a number of years ago because it met important criteria. It is useful because–

• Hispanic children are included in the re-standardization;
  
  
• It is a recognized screening tool;
  
  
• There are English and Spanish versions;
  
  
• Training resources are locally available to centers;
  
  
• It covers children with ages ranging from birth to six years; and
  
  
• It can be administered by paraprofessionals.

ECMHSP chose to use the E-LAP/LAP for ongoing child assessment for many of the same reasons. There are English and Spanish versions, it can be administered by paraprofessionals, it includes children with ages ranging from birth to six years, and it is a recognized assessment tool. Both the Denver II and E-LAP/LAP are relatively easy to administer once staff understand the purpose of the tools, the information they provide, and the mechanics of administration.

With such a long-standing and integrated systemwide screening and assessment process in place, reviewing our assessment tool/process to consider change could be a daunting task! However, ECMHSP looks at it as a chance to strengthen our assessment system, reinforce the connections between assessment and curriculum, and measure more accurately children's progress towards established goals and outcomes.

Where We Are

The ECMHSP Child Assessment team has established a course of action. They are gathering information on commercial assessment tools, reviewing Head Start materials on child outcomes, program performance measures and program self-assessment, and establishing criteria and indicators for evaluating assessment tools.

The last activity has entailed quite a bit of discussion to flesh out the indicators for each criterion. So far, our global criteria include staff and training, cost, age-range, play-based, correlation with curriculum, and correlation with the Head Start child outcomes.

One of the criteria–the need to be culturally and linguistically appropriate–requires thoughtful consideration. We ask ourselves, "What do we mean by culturally and linguistically appropriate? How do we determine whether or not an assessment tool is culturally and linguistically appropriate?"

Since all assessment tools and assessment developers are influenced by culture, no assessment is entirely free of bias. Assessment tools measure what is thought to be important to the developer and to the society at large. For example, mainstream American society values competencies in reading and writing. Thus many assessments emphasize related cognitive and fine motor skills. Other cultures value oral traditions and interpersonal relationship skills. Because our programs serve children from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, we have developed the following indicators and questions. These preliminary indicators may be refined as we apply them–

• Pilot/standardization studies. Was the assessment tool piloted with children similar to our population of children?
  
  
• Availability of tool in other languages. Is the tool available in Spanish? Other languages? If yes, is it a direct translation from the English, or is it an adapted translation (i.e., items assess information similar to the English version, but use words, pictures, and concepts that are culturally familiar and relevant to Latino or other cultures)?
  
  
• Protocol for item administration and interpretation of responses. Do assessors have flexibility in administering items? If a child gives a correct answer, but in his/her home language, is that response acceptable? What kind of latitude do assessors have in interpreting children's responses? Do assessors have to use a prescribed kit of assessment materials, or can they use materials familiar to the children?

Where We Are Going

The Child Assessment Team is ready to begin the work of evaluating selected assessment tools using our criteria and indicators. Since our programs already use the LAP, we will begin with that tool. This will also entail correlating the LAP with The Creative Curriculum used by many migrant programs.

Once the committee has evaluated all the assessment tools, ECMHSP senior management staff will review the information and make an informed decision. They will take into account the impact of any change on our established continuity system, staff training issues, the integration of assessment and curriculum, and measurement of child outcomes as mandated by Head Start.

This is an exciting time for ECMHSP. Our system review undoubtedly will have a profound effect on the educational services we provide. While we already know a great deal about children's developmental and educational status, this work will help us know better where we want our children to go and how to tell when they get there. This is a golden opportunity to create and deliver an even stronger, sounder educational experience for young children–one that will prepare them to become lifelong, successful learners.

Jan Greenberg is the Training and Development Associate at ECMHSP. T: 703-243-7522; E: greenberg@ecmhsp.org.

The following ECMHSP staff contributed to the article: Leila Arjona, Clara Cappiello, Grace Horsman, and Kim Stacy.