Using School Readiness as the Measurement of Developmental Outcome on Assessing At-risk Children.

Author(s):

MingJiun Sung

Conference:

ECER 2008

Network:

9. Assessment, Evaluation, Testing and Measurement

Format:

Paper

Session Information

09 SES 03A, Tools and Methods in Assessment (Part 1)

Paper Session

Time:

2008-09-10

14:00-15:30

Room:

AK2 139

Chair:

Sabine Hornberg

Contribution

The purpose of this study is to assess at-risk children by using school readiness as the measurement of developmental outcome, for the concept of school readiness is believed to be fairer and more meaningful for the comparison of general children and at-risk children (McDermott, Green, Francis, & Scott, 2000; Mehaffie & McCall, 2002). In addition, assessing at-risk children’s school readiness can make us understand the continuous effects of how risk factors and protective factors influence the children’s developmental trajectories (McClelland, Morrison, & Holmes, 2000; Meisels, 1999). So, we referred some experiences of U.S.A., such as School Readiness Act of 2005(H. R. 2123, 109th Cong, 2005), School Readiness Indicators Initiative(School Readiness Indicators Initiative, 2004), Head Start Child Outcome Framework(Head Start Bureau, 2005), and many school readiness assessment instruments(Janus & Offord, 2000; LeBuffe & Naglieri, 1999; Maryland State Department of Education, 2002; Ngaruiya, 2004; Piotrkowski, 2004), and the culture of Chinese people, we developed a scale- “The Children’s School Readiness Scale” that can used to assess children from preschool to 3rd grade.

Method

Three clusters of samples were used to establish the reliability and validity of the Children’s School Readiness Scale we are developing, including a sample of about 250 general children in kindergarten, a sample of about 800 first-grade children in public elementary schools, and a sample of about 750 at-risk children from our last year’s investigation. Three repeated measurement samples for cross-reporter consistency, test-rest reliability, and criterion validity by correlating scores with of Comprehensive Developmental Inventory for Infants and Toddlers (CDIIT) (Wang, 1998) will also be used in our investigation. On developing The Children’s School Readiness Scale, we used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test the hypothesized factor structures and investigate the psychometric properties of the impact of inclusion scales. In our hypothesized model, three latent factors were specified in the measurement model, with each latent factor representing one of three subscale: Social and Emotional Performance, Learning Quality at School, Language and Communication. Item Response Theory (IRT) techniques (Linacre, & Wright, 2000; Muthén & Muthén, 2005) were used to reduce the potential crisis of missing responses caused by the difficulties of the items, for IRT techniques can handle missing response patterns on a collection of items by estimating the latent trait of the item parameters, will be used as a reference of keeping or dropping the items. We also used Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) approach in estimating the possible informant effect that associated with having teachers to rate multiple children within the classroom and that the teachers use the rating scale differently (Widaman, 2006).

Expected Outcomes

The data analysis consisted of two parts; the first part is concerned about the psychometrics of the Children’s School Readiness Scale, including factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, IRT analysis, ROC curve analysis, and two-level one way random effect ANOVA; the second part is concerned about the analysis of children’s resilience and vulnerability, including the descriptive statistics of school readiness scores, test of means across groups, distal and proximal risk factors modeling analysis, evaluation of cut-off value, and three-level conditional and unconditional HLM modeling analysis.

References

Head Start Bureau (2005). Head Start Child Outcomes Framework. Head Start Bureau Technical Work Group on Child Outcomes of Head Start Bureau. Janus, M., & Offord, D. (2000). Reporting on readiness to learn in Canada. Canadian Journal of Policy Research, 1, 71-75. LeBuffe, P.A., & Naglieri, J.A. (1999). Devereux Early Childhood Assessment Program: Technical Manual. Lewisville, NC: Kaplan Press. Linacre, J. M. & Wright, B. D. (2000). WINSTEP: Multiple choice, rating scale, and partial credit Rasch analysis [computer software]. Chicago: MESA. Maryland State Department of Education (2002). School readiness baseline information. Maryland State Department of Education. McClelland, M. M., Morrison, F. J., & Holmes, D. L. (2000). Children at risk for early academic problems: The role of learning-related social skills. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 15, 307-329. McDermott, P. A., Green, L. F., Francis, J. M. & Scott, D. H. (2000). Preschool learning behaviors scale. Philadelphia: Edumetric and Clinical Science. Mehaffie, K. E. & McCall, R. B. (2002). Kindergarten Readiness: An Overview of Issues and Assessment. University of Pittsburgh Office of Child Development Meisels, S. J. (1999). Assessing readiness. In R. Pianta & M. J. Cox (Eds.), The transition to kindergarten (pp. 39-66). Baltimore: Brookes. Muthén, B., & Muthén, L. (2005). M-Plus User Manual Version 3.12. Los Angeles, CA: Muthén& Muthén. Ngaruiya, S. (2004). Assessing the Influence of Different Early Childhood Development Models on Pre-School Children’s School Readiness in Kenya. Unpublished master’s thesis. University of Victoria , Kenyatta. Piotrkowski, C. S., (2004). A community-based approach to school readiness in Head Start. In E. Zigler & S. J. Styfco (Eds.), The Head Start debates (pp. 129-142). Baltimore: Brookes. School Readiness Act of 2005 (2005). H. R. 2123, 109th Cong. School Readiness Indicators Initiative (2004). State profiles: School reainess indicators and lessons learned. Rhode Island: KID COUNT. Wang, T. M. (1998). Comprehensive Developmental Inventory for Infants and Toddlers. Department of Education. Widaman, K. (2006). Measurement issues and psychometric methods in developmental research. Monographs of Society for Research in Child Development, 2006, Blackwell Synergy.

Author Information

MingJiun Sung

Chaoyang University of Technology

Department of Early Childhood Development and Education

Taichung County

215

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