ABSTRACT
Assessment in early childhood education can measure many things, be conducted in markedly different ways, and for very different purposes. This chapter focuses on the assessment of young children for the purposes of conducting early education program evaluation and research. The role of assessment in furthering the understanding of early childhood education has received far less attention and, in fact, is even omitted from some listings of the multiple purposes of assessment with young children. Researchers use various kinds of assessment techniques to capture the behaviors and then make inferences about the child’s status regarding a construct based on a score. Most of the tools are standardized direct assessments with the exception of social-emotional outcomes. The nature of the assessments used to measure outcomes may be a contributing factor to two issues that have perplexed researchers in early childhood evaluations. The assessments used in research on early childhood education have evolved and stayed the same over the last 70 years.
