Accountability: Alignment and Assessment of Three thru Five Early Learning Standards and Early Childhood Special Education in Arkansas

Arkansas Early Childhood Education Framework  When the Arkansas K-12 Frameworks were revised in 1998, a decision was made to build on the existing Early Childhood Education Framework, using a format that will bridge to the revised K-12 Frameworks

Arkansas Early Childhood Education Framework  The Early Childhood Education Framework identified five developmental learning strands.  Social/emotional development  Creative/aesthetic learning  Cognitive/intellectual learning  Physical development and  Language

For each strand, developmental benchmarks were identified  Early childhood bench mark was defined as – a level of performance that can be supported through observations, descriptions and documentations of a child’s performance or behavior, and by samples of a child’s work. Some educators may also refer to these as “learner outcomes”

A Developmental Rating Scale was developed to provide ongoing assessment and is intended to be:  A practical way of documenting each child’s development over an extended period of time; from the beginning to the end of the year  A tool that can be used to develop a complete picture of individual children in order to plan a program and design appropriate strategies and activities to promote each child’s growth and development

Developmental Rating Scale  A comfortable way to help parents recognize emerging skills and abilities of their child  A method of documenting skills and behavior that can be shared with support staff and specialists

Rating Categories The rating scale includes three categories for identifying where children are in their development with regard to each item on the scale. The categories are:  Not yet – this means that evidence of this skill is rarely or never seen  Emerging – this means some evidence of this skill has been observed  Consistently – this means that the skill or behavior is one that the child has mastered and demonstrated consistently

How does the assessment relate to your states overall accountability system?  All EC curriculums utilized in the Arkansas Better Chance for School Success programs must be aligned with the Frameworks/Benchmarks.  There is a state approval system for each curriculum and the companies must provide the cross walk of their programs to our Frameworks

Cross walking  One primary system that Arkansas uses is Worksampling. As teachers enter their observations and activities into the online system the worksampling system will automatically pull up the appropriate framework and benchmark for that child.  We have also cross walked the Frameworks/benchmarks to the Battelle

How are we using the assessment to our overall accountability System?  Working collaboratively with the pre-k programs we are utilization the worksampling system as part of special education early childhood outcomes

 The EC special education teachers are also required to link IEP goals to the EC Frameworks and Benchmarks