Performance-based assessments require teacher candidates to demonstrate proficiency on specific teaching tasks and apply knowledge in authentic settings. This article describes the development and use of performance-based assessments (PBAs) for advancing the learning and evaluation of teacher candidates in an early childhood special education…

This paper presents results of Year 2 of an Early Reading First project in a low-income, primarily African American community. Goals of Early Reading First include preparing at-risk preschoolers for school success. This project provided professional development, classroom coaching, books, and materials in support of a literacy-focused preschool…

Highlighting the unique educational needs of gifted and high ability preschoolers, this article guides the reader to consider the characteristics of young gifted children along with appropriate assessment practices in planning educational programming. A triarchic approach to programs and services for gifted preschoolers is outlined with major…

"Data collected from eligibility assessments need to be useful and connected across all areas of service delivery." The content and flow of information have enormous implications for practice. Professionals are challenged because they lack functional information needed to create useful goals and objectives, implement effective…

In the past decade in the United States, pre-kindergarten programs for four year olds have expanded rapidly as a potentially powerful intervention intended to promote school readiness for children at-risk for future school failure. This paper describes in detail multi-dimensional profiles of observed quality across 692 classrooms in 11 states…

With its comprehensive coverage of instruction and intervention practices in natural environments, this is the essential methods textbook for preservice educators and therapists preparing to work with young children who have disabilities. Focusing on children from birth to age 5, this text gives future professionals a wealth of specific, practical…

In the UK Centres of Excellence were funded by the DfES to model high quality, multi-agency, early years services for young children and their families. They were precursors to Children's Centres to be established across the UK. Early Excellence Centres were evaluated at national and local levels. This article will draw on data from local…

Words Work! is an approach to improving literacy outcomes for children through teacher development and parent engagement. In this article the authors describe the pilot phase of the project. The staff at Words Work! created an assessment system that aligns curriculum with assessment and collection of student data and teacher planning. Teachers use…

Infant-control habituation methodology, although serving the research community well, has never been carefully analyzed. A main use is to equate infants in their level of habituation prior to experimental manipulations in a posthabituation phase. When studied analytically and with simulation, it is found to have serious difficulties. It…

A major goal of phonological intervention is to help bring a child's speech development to within normal range for his or her developmental stage. Reaching that goal may take longer than anticipated for some children. This paper illustrates an in-depth retrospective evaluation of assessment data from one child with a phonological impairment, who…

This study of the haptic exploratory strategies used by nine children with visual impairments and additional disabilities when interacting with portable and freely manipulable objects found that a broader approach to assessment and analysis is required than is used with typically developing children. An "adaptive-tasks" approach is proposed as a…

The field of staff development needs better evaluation both to improve the effectiveness of teachers' learning experiences and to produce credible evidence that will garner more support for professional development. Getting serious about evaluating professional development demonstrates that a school system or school is truly serious about…

Thirty-two 5-year-old children with specific language impairment (SLI) and 32 chronological age (CA) controls completed 4 tasks that were considered potential positive markers for SLI. Children's performance on 2 linguistic tasks (past tense and noun plurals task) and 2 processing tasks (nonword repetition and digit recall) were examined. This…

In this technical report, we describe the development and piloting of a series of mathematics progress monitoring measures intended for use with students in kindergarten. These measures, available as part of easyCBM[TM], an online progress monitoring assessment system, were developed in 2008 and administered to approximately 2800 students from…

This article describes an early childhood professional development project that took place in the summer of 2005 in Guatemala City. Located in Central America, Guatemala has a population of approximately 12.3 million people, including more than two million children under the age of 5 (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2007; UNICEF, 2004). Events…