Assessment... what is it?

The Wortham text defines assessment in regards to early-childhood education as “the process of gathering information about children from several forms of evidence, then organizing and interpreting that information.” Assessment for the pre-school years is different from the assessment of other children and adults. Because of that, the different instruments used for assessing young children must be equivalent to the “level of mental, social, and physical development at each stage”.


The main purpose of assessing young children is to document and check whether all areas of development are progressing normally. Assessment instruments can also be used to learn about individual children, assess their development in a particular area, what they may have learned or achieved, to identify and help correct developmental problems, to plan specific programs, to diagnose medical problems, for placement in special programs or to provide special services, as well as for research. The National Early Childhood Assessment Resource Group specified all of these purposes for the appropriate uses of assessment in the early childhood years.


Because early childhood education teachers must be prepared to measure or evaluate their students, they need to be aware of and have a good understanding of the strategies, tests, and other types of assessments designed for young children. In becoming more knowledgeable of the different developmental stages and capabilities, as well as assessments such as standardized tests, observation, checklists, rating scales, portfolios, and other methods of reporting a child’s performance, teachers will be better able to determine when and how their students should be assessed and how to help them after the results have been interpreted.



Sources I used in addition to discussions from my assessment and curriculum oriented courses:

Wortham, S.C. (2008). Assessment in Early Childhood Education.
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.