Type of Document Dissertation Author Jacobson, Stephanie Hildegarde Zadro URN etd-15516149741201 Title A Comparison of Early Childhood Assessments and A Standardized Measure For Program Evaluation Degree PhD Department Educational Research and Evaluation Advisory Committee
Advisor Name Title Marvin G. Cline Committee Chair Barbara Hutson none Javaid Kaiser none Ronald McKeen none Victoria Fu none Keywords
- none
Date of Defense 1997-04-17 Availability unrestricted Abstract Traditionally,
standardized achievement tests have
been used to monitor program
effectiveness. Recently, however,
educators have questioned the
appropriateness of standardized
tests for this purpose, especially for
programs designed for young
children. Early childhood advocates
suggest using developmentally
appropriate assessments instead of
standardized achievement tests for
making classroom-level decisions
about children and for program
evaluation. Proponents, however,
have not fully identified the
psychometric properties of the
assessments, certainly not for the
purposes of program evaluation.
Although developmentally
appropriate assessments have been
implemented in a number of
classrooms across the country, few
studies have verified their ability to
discriminate among developmental
levels. In addition, even fewer
studies have addressed their use for
evaluating program effectiveness.
Using the records of 293 students
from the local site of a National
Transition Project and both classical
test theory (CTT) and item response
theory (IRT) procedures, three
assessment instruments and a
standardized test were examined. It
was shown that the Concepts about
Print portion of the Early Childhood
Assessment Package, the Language
Arts component of the kindergarten
developmental progress reports, and
the first grade Early Literacy Scale
tasks are, in fact, developmental
assessments. Additionally, IRT
procedures located students on the
developmental continuum underlying
the assessments. Although classical
ANCOVAs were unable to identify
Treatment or Head Start program
effects beyond the kindergarten
year, IRT procedures showed that
the expected proportion of students
at the highest latent ability levels
tended to be greater for students in
Demonstration schools and Head
Start graduates than their
counterparts throughout
kindergarten and first grade. A
standardized reading achievement
measure administered to the students
in second grade, was unable to
differentiate program effects through
either classical or IRT procedures.
This suggests that the concepts
underlying standardized tests differ
from those underlying
developmentally appropriate
assessments. As a result, the key
issue to be resolved is which type of
measure is more valid, that is, more
appropriate, for evaluating early
childhood programs.
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