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Early Childhood Assessment System
Rating Rubric

ORGANIZATION OF SKILLS

Skills in the Early Childhood Assessment System are organized into a set of Core Skills and a set of Extended Skills. Teachers rate children's performance on 10 core skills in each of five domains: Cognitive, Communication, Social, Self-Help, and Sensory Motor. Teachers may rate performance on approximately 300 additional skills distributed among the domains in the extended set using the rubric described below. Reports can be printed from within the program showing all of the ratings for all of the skills. A bar graph can be generated to show ratings applied to core skills. Archiving ratings over time provides information on growth and development.

 

RUBRIC PARAMETERS

The rubric used to rate a child's ability to perform skills is based on four skill parameters: Amount of Support, Frequency or Amount, Generalizability, and Quality of Performance.

  • Amount of Support - The smaller the amount of instructional and/or physical support a child needs from a person to demonstrate a skill, the greater the level of skill achievement. Using assistive technology independently to perform skills should not diminish ratings of skill achievement. A child's use of instructional and/or physical support from another person to use the assistive technology, however, does indicate an increase in amount of support.
  • Frequency or Amount - The more frequently or greater extent to which a child demonstrates a skill, the greater the level of skill achievement. More is generally a positive indicator of development.
  • Generalizability - The more situations or environments in which a child demonstrates a skill, the greater the level of skill achievement. More generalization suggests greater understanding of a skill and related concepts concerning its use.
  • Quality of Performance - The more accurately and promptly a child demonstrates a skill, the greater the level of skill achievement. High quality suggests that a skill is highly developed.


RATING RUBRIC

All four parameters should be considered when applying the rubric. The rubric includes four terms to indicate a child's level of skill achievement: Achieved, Progressing, Emerging, and Introduced. The term No Opportunity is used when a child has not had the opportunity to demonstrate a skill.

  • Achieved - The child frequently demonstrates the ability to apply the knowledge or perform the skill accurately in several environments without support.
  • Progressing - The child demonstrates understanding or use of the knowledge or skill in one or more environments with some support. The child makes some errors.
  • Emerging - The child is beginning to show understanding or use of the knowledge or skill in one environment with extensive support. The child is unable to demonstrate the skill without assistance.
  • Introduced - The child has been exposed to the knowledge or skill as part of the educational programming but demonstrates no measurable understanding of the knowledge or skill at this time.
  • No Opportunity - The student has had no opportunity to demonstrate the knowledge or skill. The knowledge or skill may not be applicable to a child's educational programming; the knowledge or skill may not yet have been introduced; or the child may have been absent when the knowledge or skill was introduced.

 

GUIDELINES FOR APPLYING THE RUBRIC

There are some guidelines to consider when applying the rubric to rate a child's ability to perform skills.

  • Applicability - Skills that are not considered to be part of a child's educational programming should be rated as No Opportunity. A teacher should apply No Opportunity when rating the skill "Walks" if walking is not a goal for a child in a wheelchair. It should be noted within the program, however, how well the child may be able to get from one place to another with the wheelchair. A child who uses a walker, on the other hand, should receive a rating for the skill "Walks". Level of achievement may be diminished if a person provides instructional and/or physical support for the child. Level of achievement, however, should not be diminished if the child is using assistive technology.
  • Expectations - When a skill is not precisely defined, the teacher should rate performance on the level of difficulty that would be expected from a typical peer. Expectations for performance on the skill "Counts aloud." for example, would be different for a 4-year-old child than for a 7-year-old child.