Using the High/Scope Preschool Child Observation Record (COR)

The High/Scope Preschool Child Observation Record (COR) is a tool for assessing the development of children two to six years old. The COR meshes quite well with the Head Start Performance Standards and the new Head Start Child Outcomes Framework. It is developmentally appropriate and widely used in Head Start programs. Head Start teachers who complete it several times a year can assess how well their program contributes to children's development. Originally developed for use with the High/Scope curriculum framework, a Head Start grant ten years ago enabled High/Scope to further develop and validate the COR for use in any early childhood program, whatever curriculum it uses. The manual for COR presents evidence of its reliability (i.e., the instrument's ability to consistently measure what it intends to measure) and concurrent validity (i.e., the instrument's ability to provide similar results for what is being measured compared to other testing instruments).

To use the COR, teachers begin by observing children and writing notes to describe their developmentally significant behavior. These notes provide them with evidence to complete 30 items in six areas of development–language and literacy, logic and mathematics, initiative, social relations, creative representation, and music and movement. These areas closely resemble the domains described in the Head Start Child Outcomes Framework. Each item has five specifically described levels, giving the assessment tool a developmental perspective that a simple checklist does not have. The levels are developmentally appropriate, ranging from the easiest to the hardest level, for preschool children two to five years of age. Here, for example, are the five levels for the item on demonstrating knowledge about books–

1. Child does not yet pick up books and hold them conventionally.
2. Child picks up books and holds them conventionally, looking at the pages and turning them.
3. Child picture-reads, telling the story from the pictures on the cover or in the book.
4. Child follows the print on a page, moving his or her eyes in the correct direction (usually left to right and top to bottom).
5. Child appears to read or actually reads a book, pointing to the words and telling the story.

High/Scope recommends that teachers participate in a two-day workshop on how to use the COR and offers these workshops throughout the country. They provide training in how to recognize developmentally significant behavior and describe it in anecdotal notes, how to select the item and item level that each anecdotal note represents, and how to report these results to parents and program officials.

High/Scope is now planning and preparing to expand the COR to both younger and older children. We have developed the High/Scope COR to be used with children from six weeks to three years (overlap ping with the preschool version that begins at age two). In the past few years, we have been working with elementary educators to develop a version of the COR for ages five to seven. We are currently conducting studies of the reliability and validity of each instrument and expect them to be available in 2001.

To consider the COR from the perspective of a director of a local program, we asked Ann Brown, director of the Michigan School Readiness program at the Learning Village, Inc., in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to answer a few questions on her program's use of the COR. Here are our questions and her responses.

Why did your program choose to use the COR for the assessment of young children?
The COR allows us to base our program on what we know about individual children. Teachers might think they already know their children, but the COR goes beyond that to organize our observations and understanding of children. It helps us see groups of children at different times of the day to help us determine if some times need to be planned more carefully. In addition, the COR facilitates our communication with parents. So many parents say, "All the kids do in this program is play. The teachers don't teach them anything." But they need to see the true picture. One of the challenges to programs like Head Start is to communicate to parents what their children are learning. The COR is a deliberate and focused way to communicate with parents about what their children are learning in Head Start.

Using the COR also means improving our interactions with children. Lately, we have been focusing on how well our teacher practices support children's initiative. For example, one day on the playground, a child wanted to walk up the stainless-steel slide. He was holding onto the sides and no other kids were around. His feet were slipping a little, but he was doing it. Referring to the COR items for initiative helped us decide it was okay for the child to do this as long as he was safe.

What do you think of the criticism that the COR is time-consuming?
Teachers who are not used to systematic observation of children's development do have to adjust to the added workload of the COR, but the effort pays off handsomely in their greater knowledge of their children's development, their ability to teach children developmentally, and their ability to communicate with parents about how their children are developing. It takes time to learn how to implement the COR well; it cannot happen overnight. It's taken our staff three years to really feel that we had put all of the parts of the COR together. The curriculum model was in place, the staff were trained, then we began attending to the COR – doing observations and putting them together. The first year, we only did the COR once on each child. Another year, we went from using the manual to the computerized system, which involved some learning. All of the steps took time, but I knew we were doing better than most other programs in the assessment system we were putting into place.

Do you think it is appropriate to use the COR as a screening tool?
No. We use it to develop program plans, and to get information about how to support children's development. We begin by writing anecdotes, which helps us identify issues to address. For example, we can learn about a child's language skills at meals over a period of time. The period of time is required to distinguish a true language issue from a child's lack of comfort in a new program. Observational evidence that is consistent over a few weeks is important to have before making a referral for a formal evaluation.

How does the COR help you with child outcomes?
One of my focuses this year has been to share with staff the outcomes for children by presenting them with pre- and post-program COR comparison data. The discussion helps staff focus on areas of child development and answer the questions: What do we need to know more about? What goals do we want to develop? We use the COR to assess child outcomes for reporting to the government. We are systematically assessing children using an instrument that I trust because it has proven reliability and validity. It's not just a checklist or a homemade assessment tool. The COR really focuses on staff responsiveness to what they do every day. It's feedback from the kids. Information from the COR is a continual topic of conversation.

Overall, the COR accomplishes three things–

• You see children's actions in the context of the classroom and the home.
  
• You see children not only alone, but also in relationship to their peers and adults.
  
• The different parts of the COR inform you about all areas of a child's development.

Head Start's new requirement to assess child outcomes has the potential to radically transform the program. An excellent way to ensure that the transformation will enhance children's educational experiences is to use an observational assessment tool of established reliability and validity, and to ensure that it is both developmentally appropriate to children and user-friendly. The COR is such a tool.

Larry Schweinhart is the Research Division Chair and Eileen Storer is a Research Associate at the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation. T: 734-485-2000, E: LarryS@highscope.org, and EileenS@highscope.org.