Psychoeducational Assessment of Preschool Children

Vincent C. Alfonso, Bruce A. Bracken, Richard J. Nagle

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429620461
• Edition: 5
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Psychoeducational Assessment of Preschool Children, Fifth Edition, provides academics and school-based practitioners such as psychologists, speech-language pathologists, and social workers with an up-to-date guide to the assessment of young children. Long recognized as the standard text and reference in its field, this comprehensive, skill-building overview is organized into four sections: foundations, ecological assessment, assessment of developmental domains, and special considerations. Chapters written by recognized scholars in the field cover theory, research, and application. This thoroughly revised new edition addresses current developments in preschool assessment, new policies and legislation, and student/family population demographics.

Part I

Foundations

Chapter 1

Issues in Preschool Assessment

Richard J. Nagle, Sandra Glover Gagnon, and Pamela Kidder-Ashley

Historical Context of Preschool Assessment

The landscape of preschool assessment has changed significantly, albeit gradually, since the 1986 amendments (Public Law [P.L.] 99-457) to the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (P.L. 94-142) required that states provide a free and appropriate public education to children with disabilities aged 3 years to 5 years, and Part H of Section 619 established incentives for states to develop services for infants and toddlers with special needs. The ensuing regulation changes mandated that assessment practices stipulated for school-age children also be applied to the assessment of preschool children. Subsequent amendments were made in 1990 (P.L. 101-476), when the original act was renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and in 1991 (P.L. 102-119), adding the category of developmentally delayed as an option for disabled children between the ages of 3 and 5 years. P.L. 102-119 also specified that developmental delay could be manifested in one or more of the following areas: physical, cognitive, communication, social or emotional, or adaptive. The 1997 reauthorization (P.L. 105-17) extended developmental delay to the age of 9 years, at the discretion of state and local education agencies. The act also stipulated that early intervention services should be delivered within natural environments and that states require local school district personnel to participate in transition planning conferences for toddlers with disabilities who are about to enter preschool (Knoblauch & McLane, 1999).

The most recent reauthorization of the law occurred in 2004 (P.L. 108-446), when it was renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (although it continues to be referred to in most contexts as IDEA), but no further changes were made to provisions directly related to assessment and eligibility for preschool children. However, the 2004 amendments contained a provision that indirectly affected preschool assessment policy and procedures. That provision was the result of efforts, which began earlier in the mid-1990s, from a number of leading researchers in the field of learning disabilities (e.g., Fuchs, 1995; Gresham, 2002; Marston, 2001), to change the approach to identifying children with Specific Learning Disabilities (SLDs) under IDEA. They proposed that a systematic evaluation of a child’s response to intervention (RTI) would be more valid than the traditional IQ-achievement discrepancy approach that had prevailed since P.L. 94-142 was passed in 1975. As a result of these efforts, the 2004 IDEA amendments allowed local education agencies to use “a process that determines if the child responds to scientific, research-based intervention as a part of the evaluation procedures” (IDEA—20 U.S.C. § 1414(b)(6)) when determining a child’s eligibility for special education under the category of SLD.

This RTI process was the precursor to what is now referred to as multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS), a framework that is increasingly applied within early childhood programs. MTSS is a preventive general education framework that employs data-based problem solving in a tiered continuum of evidence-based instructional practices intended to improve academic, behavioral, and social-emotional outcomes for all students (Colorado Department of Education, 2015). Although MTSS is not a legislated initiative, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA; P.L. 114-95), passed in 2015 to replace the No Child Left Behind Act, references tiered systems of support seven times and specifically endorses the use of a “schoolwide tiered model” to prevent and address students’ educational needs. It also stipulates that ESSA grant funds may be applied to providing multi-tiered systems of support for literacy services (ESSA—20 U.S.C. § 2224(e)(4)). Furthermore, the law outlines the options for using Title I funding, the purpose of which is to improve the academic achievement of economically disadvantaged students, and expressly indicates that funds may be used for delivering early childhood educational programs. The law further stipulates that all Title I schools must develop a comprehensive plan that includes, among other things, a description of “strategies for assisting preschool children in the transition from early childhood education programs to local elementary school programs” (ESSA—20 U.S.C. § 6314 (b), (7), (A), (iii), (V)). In 2016, the United States Department of Education (USDOE) published a document entitled Early Learning in the Every Student Succeeds Act: Expanding Opportunities to Support our Youngest Learners, which highlighted key benefits of high-quality early childhood educational programs and explained in detail how local education agencies could apply ESSA provisions and funding to support them. Furthermore, a 2016 memorandum issued by the USDOE’s Office of Special Education (OSEP, 2016) specified that local education agencies cannot require an “RTI process” and thereby delay IDEA eligibility evaluations of preschoolers who have been referred by individuals or agencies in the community.

Such legislative and policy support for early childhood services has developed in tandem with political and social justice efforts to address the achievement gap between white and minority students in public schools (Bohrnstedt, Kitmitto, Ogut, Sherman, & Chan, 2015; Hemphill & Vanneman, 2011) and, more broadly, to address the problems of poverty and inequality in the United States. Federal funding for preschool services began when Head Start was established in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “war on poverty” and has continued to the present. In more recent decades, there has been increasing pressure from various sectors (e.g., business, law enforcement, military, education, and faith-based groups) to ensure that all children are adequately prepared—academically and socially—to start school at the age of 5 years. In 2015, the USDOE published A Matter of Equity: Preschool in America, documenting the benefits of high-quality preschool and early childhood educational programs and outlining the then-current state of public funding for such programs. The document reported that, from 2003 to 2015, states increased funding for preschool programs and services by more than 200%. However, the focus of such promotional efforts seems to be shifting from advocating for preschool programs that serve children from age 3 to 5 to a narrower focus on pre-kindergarten programs that specifically target 4-year-olds. In fact, a number of recent gubernatorial candidates have included the provision of universal pre-kindergarten (pre-K) in their political platforms (Wong, 2014). Although few states have funded mandated universal pre-K (indeed, some still do not mandate kindergarten enrollment), a recent report by the National Institute for Early Education Research (Friedman-Krauss et al., 2019) revealed that, since publishing their annual report in 2002, states have added funding for nearly 900,000 preschoolers, mostly 4-year-olds. The report, which did not distinguish between preschool and pre-K programs, indicated that during the 2017–2018 school year, approximately one-third of all 4-year-olds in the United States were enrolled in state-funded preschool programs; 44% when federally funded and mandated programs were counted.

The recent proliferation of preschool programs and pre-K programs for 4-year-olds has affected the practice of preschool assessment in a number of ways, most notably by increasing the number of 4-year-olds who are served by public schools and who, therefore, may be referred for evaluation by school personnel. Consequently, the proliferation also has increased the necessity of ensuring that school-based personnel are prepared to provide appropriate assessment services to this growing population.

Purposes of Preschool Assessment

Although there are various ways to categorize the purposes and types of assessments carried out within educational settings, there is broad agreement that the overarching purpose is to enhance student learning (National Association for the Education of Young Children [NAEYC], 2009). Through the process of assessment, educational professionals gather information to make well-informed decisions that promote student success. In its most recent publication outlining recommended practices for early intervention and early childhood special education services, the Division for Early Childhood (DEC, 2014) of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) listed the following purposes of assessment: “screening, determining eligibility for services, individualized planning, monitoring child progress, and measuring child outcomes” (p. 8). Others have included diagnosis (Nagle, 2007) and program evaluation for accountability (Bagnato, Goins, Pretti-Frontczak, & Neisworth, 2014) as additional critical purposes.

For individual children, assessment can be conceptualized as the first step in the intervention process. A clear and direct link between assessment and intervention is critical at every developmental level and is considered essential during early childhood (Bagnato, Neisworth, & Pretti-Frontczak, 2010). In recent decades, early childhood professionals and scholars have increasingly called for the use of assessment practices that are developmentally appropriate, conducted in natural contexts, and directly applicable to planning and evaluating children’s learning experiences (Bagnato et al., 2010; DEC, 2014; Losardo & Syverson, 2011; NAEYC, 2009).

Screening

Screening typically involves the administration of brief, low-cost assessment procedures to large numbers of children or individual children to determine if further, more in-depth evaluation is warranted. Screening measures are frequently administered by paraprofessionals and given to the entire student population in an educational setting or, if conducted within a community or medical setting, to as many children as possible. Because screening measures are often used with large groups of children, they must be easy and inexpensive to use, while at the same time being sufficiently reliable and valid to ensure that they facilitate sound decision-making (Emmons & Alfonso, 2005).

Broadly speaking, there are two main types of screening—developmental and universal—employed with young children (DEC/CEC, NAEYC, & National Head Start Association, 2013). Developmental screening is used in educational, clinical, and medical settings and involves comparing a child’s performance to that of a normative sample. Developmental screening is used to help determine if the child is developing as expected or appears to be at risk of having or developing a disabling condition, in which case follow-up diagnostic evaluation is warranted. As such, developmental screening often serves as a component of a school district’s Child Find efforts, which are mandated under IDEA (20 U.S.C. § 1412(a)(3)).

Universal screening is used in educational settings and helps determine if a child is making expected progress with respect to the program’s learning objectives and, if not, what types of targeted support or interventions might be put in place to facilitate the child’s progress. Here, comparison is made with an instructional objective or criterion, often referred to as a benchmark (DEC/CEC, NAEYC, & National Head Start Association, 2013). Thus, screening is not intended to be diagnostic; rather, it should assist professionals in determining which children might need more in-depth evaluation to diagnose a disability or qualify the child for specialized services, or which children might need additional support or intervention.

Developmental screeners are routinely used in pediatric and family medical practices, and disorder-specific screenings are sometimes conducted as well. In fact, the Recommendations for Preventive Pediatric Health Care of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP, 2019) suggest that children be screened for general developmental issues and for autism, using validated tools, at specified ages. Although the AAP does not endorse specific screening tools, it does make available an extensive list of potential measures (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2017), which includes basic information about each tool’s validity (specifically, its sensitivity and specificity, which are discussed below) as well as practical features such as completion-time estimates and cost. Developmental screeners are also commonly used in early childhood education settings, often in response to a concern voiced by a parent or educator that a child may have a disability. Many of the same screeners used by healthcare providers are also used in preschool settings.

Developmental screening tools must meet established reliability and validity criteria to ensure that errors are minimized. Potential screening errors include false positives—identifying a child as requiring follow-up when no true problem exists—and false negatives—failing to identify a child who actually has a disabling condition. To maximize their accuracy and usefulness, developmental screening measures should be used only if they meet established standards with respect to their sensitivity and specificity. Positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) are also important features to evaluate. Sensitivity and specificity are characteristics of the measure, whereas PPV and NPV are affected by the prevalence of the risk or disability in the screened population. Sensitivity refers to the proportion of children actually requiring follow-up evaluation who are accurately identified as such (i.e., the screener’s accuracy in identifying true positives); measures with high sensitivity also tend to produce high false positive rates. In contrast, a screener’s specificity is defined as the proportion of children who truly are not at risk or in need of follow-up evaluation who are correctly classified as such (i.e., the screener’s accuracy in identifying true negatives); measures with higher specificity also identi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Notes on the Authors
• Acknowledgments
• PART I: Foundations
• 1. Issues in Preschool Assessment
• 2. Observation of Preschool Children’s Assessment-Related Behaviors
• 3. Creating the Optimal Preschool Testing Situation
• PART II: Ecological Assessment
• 4. School Readiness and Academic Functioning in Preschoolers
• 5. Assessment of Parents’ Support of Young Children’s Learning through a Sociocultural Lens
• 6. Assessment of Early Childhood School and Classroom Environments
• 7. Play-Based Approaches to Preschool Assessment
• PART III: Assessment of Developmental Domains
• 8. Behavior and Social-Emotional Skills Assessment of Preschool Children
• 9. Adaptive Behavior Assessment of Preschool Children
• 10. Cognitive Assessment of Preschool Children: A Pragmatic Review of Theoretical, Quantitative, and Qualitative Characteristics
• 11. Assessing Communication, Language, and Speech in Preschool Children
• 12. Assessment of Gross Motor Development in Preschool Children
• PART IV: Special Considerations
• 13. Screening and Diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder in Preschool-Aged Children
• 14. Psychoeducational Assessment of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Preschool Children
• 15. Neuropsychological Assessment of Preschool-Aged Children
• 16. Understanding the Impact of Poverty and Implications for Assessment with Young Children from Low-Resource Backgrounds
• 17. Linking Assessment Results to Evidence-Based Interventions: Best Practices for Preschool Children
• Index