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.
