23 Jul CRDG Continues to Build Assessment Expertise in Early Childhood
As part of a growing focus on early childhood education, a team of CRDG evaluators collaborated with the University of Hawai‘i’s Center on the Family to help evaluate the quality of early language and literacy instruction in preschool classrooms.
The project looked at ten Head Start preschools in a variety of settings. Another ten comparison schools, usually in the same area, were selected to match the project schools for selected criteria. In this final year of the three-year collaboration, a mathematics curriculum was added to project classrooms and the mathematics subtest from the Developmental Skills Checklist was added to the battery of individual child assessments to measure its impact.
As the project comes to a close next year, one of the lasting benefits is the team of seasoned data collectors that are now available to work on other projects in early childhood education. With the growing focus on early childhood education that the state is promoting, CRDG is well positioned to make a strong contribution in this most critical of areas.