Leigh Parise: Policymakers talk about solutions, but which ones really work? Welcome to Evidence First, a podcast from MDRC that explores the best evidence available on what works to improve the lives of people with low incomes. I’m your host, Leigh Parise.

This is the second episode in a three-part series on pre-k student assessments, and in this episode, we’ll focus on the perspectives of pre-k teachers in the assessment process.

The majority of children in the United States now attend some type of formal pre-K program before starting elementary school. Pre-K assessments – or short tests and activities that measure early skills – are an important tool for understanding children’s learning and development in these settings. Pre-K teachers play a critical role in the assessment process. Teachers are often responsible for administering assessments and communicating children’s progress with parents. They also rely on assessments to learn about their students’ development and adjust their teaching practices to match each individual child’s needs. In order to ensure that measurement tools are used most effectively in the classroom, it is necessary to center teacher voices in the development of the pre-K assessment system.

On this episode, I talk with one preschool teacher and one former preschool teacher and current administrator from the Parent Infant Center in West Philadelphia to get their perspectives on assessments, including how they use assessments and where there are opportunities to make them more useful.  The Parent Infant Center is a childcare provider that focuses on learning through play and connection to nature and serves students from a diverse range of socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. Today, I spoke with Lia Wilson who is the Preschool Program Coordinator at the Parent Infant Centers where she oversees the center’s eight pre-K classrooms and Brooks Wilson is a Lead Teacher at the Center. 

Leigh Parise: Thank you so much for joining us today. Lia, could you start us off and tell us a little bit about the Parent Infant Center and the role that the organization plays in Philadelphia?

Lia Wilson: Sure. We are a non-profit in West Philadelphia. We serve our general immediate community, but also the larger community of Philadelphia. We have both private pay students and students who receive CCIS and who are part of the Pre-K Counts program. So, we try and have as much of a diverse community as we can. Because we understand how unbelievably expensive childcare can be, we try and find ways to make it possible for everyone to have a high-quality childcare experience.

Leigh Parise: That is wonderful and very important. I will tell you one thing I did not say about myself is that I am also a parent to two young kids who are both in our local public school for the first time. The youngest one started in kindergarten, so I definitely feel that.

Lia Wilson: Yeah.

Leigh Parise: Great. Thank you so much, that sounds like a really, incredibly responsive and engaging place to be for kids. Lia, can you tell us a little bit about how assessments currently work in your classrooms serving three- and four-year-old students?

Lia Wilson: So, three times a year, we have our official assessments, which is Teaching Strategies GOLD. This is the assessment system we use and it's very comprehensive. It uses data that we've gathered over the year and we input it, and you're able to see on sort of a grid, like, a bar chart almost, where children fall. So you can see if there are children who might need a little bit more support in certain areas, children who are above and beyond where they should be, and it really helps in designing conferences and talking to the parents about their child's development, but also in creating small groups within the classroom, knowing who needs more support and who can give peer support, as well.

Aside from our official on-paper assessments, we keep portfolios throughout the year. So we're gathering assessment data that way. We have one or two things that we gather per month, like, a self-portrait, a writing sample, a cutting sample, things like that. And we're always going through and taking photos of the children doing work, keeping samples of their work that seems like it hits certain marks, and the longer you've been doing it, the more you can recognize what's important to keep, what's important to document. And we'll also take dictation from the children, so we'll keep that in there, as well.

And for most of our pre-K children, as well, we do something called a standard performance measure - that's just an assessment for letter recognition, both uppercase and lowercase, and letter-sound correspondence. And once a year, twice a year if there's any kind of concern, but definitely once a year, we do something called "ages and stages," which gives us an idea of where the child is developmentally. We usually do this at the beginning of the year.

And there's also a social-emotional one, as well. And it gives you a number at the end to kind of guide you if there's any more concerns, something to keep an eye on, just gives you more information to work with.

Leigh Parise: Thank you. That sounds really comprehensive. So I have a question. So, the first one that you mentioned the data that you're gathering over the year, that puts it in a grid and that you use to help ust design conferences and engage with parents, how often are you doing those kinds of assessments over the course of the year?

Lia Wilson: We do those three times a year. We do them in October-

Brooks Wilson: October, February, and May.

Lia Wilson: Mm-hmm.

Leigh Parise: Okay. And then are there ways that the different things you’ve talked about are connected to one another? Like the portfolio and this inner performance measure?

Lia Wilson: All of that data, everything that we put into teaching strategies. We're looking through the portfolio to see if we have evidence that they met this goal, or if we're talking with our teaching team to see if anybody else has had anecdotal records of, of them meeting these goals. So all of the information that goes into teaching strategies comes from all of the other assessments that we're doing over the course of the year. Some of them are more formal written things, and a lot of them are more informal, anecdotal record types of things.

Leigh Parise: Brooks, you are in the classroom with your students every day, and so it would be good to hear a little bit from you. In your eyes, what's the general purpose and the goal of classroom and student assessments?

Brooks Wilson: To have the perspective of the teacher who's doing assessments, the labor of doing the assessment is kind of one of the least fun parts of the job. But having a really standardized way of knowing the widely-held expectations for a student who's in your care is an invaluable tool, really. If you use this tool correctly, it will both inform the kids who have some additional needs that may not be met, or it might highlight where your teaching skills are falling short.

So, for example, if you notice that most of your class is kind of lumping together in a general place on the spectrum and that's not  up to your level of widely held expectations for your group, that should inform you that your own practice is failing in some way. That means that, perhaps, I'll just say for a random example, that maybe you need to focus a little bit more on literacy skills. Or perhaps you need to focus more on what we might call "and one correlation." Just simple, counting ways and helping kids understand that one more than 10 is 11. This sort of practice that, generally speaking, kids should be able to do.

But if you notice that most of your kids are falling behind that point on that spectrum, then that would tell you that it's a teacher problem. And then, you'll notice occasionally that you'll have a student that is consistently falling behind or way ahead, perhaps, of widely held expectations. And that might inform you of a kid who has additional needs one way or the other. Perhaps they have some needs that need to be sort of highlighted to the parents.  “Hey, this kid is exceptionally good at reading," for example. "What are you doing at home that's maybe supporting that?" And some kids just get skills like that just out of nowhere.

And then you might see a kid that's falling a little bit lower than your widely held expectations or behind where they might be not keeping pace with their cohort. And those kids, will inform you that, this is going to be a conversation that we need to talk with the parents.

Most classes don't generate the assessment reports from Teaching Strategies GOLD. We generate sort of more individualized bespoke conference forms when we speak with the family. So, generally speaking, they're not going to get them if they wanted to. They could get the assessment form generated by the program, but for the most part, I think most teachers are going for a more personal conference that really gives the most important information from the assessments. Not just what, the information that the assessments make available to them.

Leigh Parise: Can you talk more about what it looks like when you use data to inform instruction?

Brooks Wilson: Oh, that's not a problem at all. So a great way to do that is because I pointed out that using the software that we use, we can see where all the kids are kind of falling on this spectrum of widely held expectations. And noting if a kid's kind of falling out on that. If they're consistently falling outside of those widely held expectations, then it's important to take note of the domain in which they might be falling outside of the widely held expectations.

For example, if they're falling outside of the widely held expectations in literacy, it could be due to inexperience. They may have come from a different center that didn't prompt them with literacy activities as often as our classroom does. And so we maybe need to make some personal time one-on-one with the teacher to find an engaging literacy activity for that kid. And then, it gets a little bit more complicated if they're falling outside of the widely held expectations for social-emotional skills, because that might indicate some underlying additional needs.

That may prompt a conversation with the family to talk about where their kid is socially in the classroom, if there are other developmental delays that are also in line with some of those social delays and those are generally speaking not super fun conversations to have. But building trust with families to know that, hey, I'm speaking to you as someone who has a lot of experience with this, and I'm speaking as a teacher who wants your kid to be in our classroom. So, making sure that the family feels supported and that they understand that the reason we do these assessments is not to alienate their kids, but to integrate their kids using the information that we have.

Leigh Parise: So, Brooks, what do you do to keep parents informed and connected about their children's and learning? It's helpful to hear you talk a little bit about how you use those assessments to understand individual students and what they need. So, it'd be great to hear you say a little bit about that.

Brooks Wilson: You're in luck, because I'm in the middle of conferences right now, so you'll get sort of a taste of what I am accustomed to talking about. Conferences happen like we mentioned earlier, three times a year and, generally speaking, we kind of try to make it a strong, near-mandatory recommendation that they do the fall conference so that they can understand what our assessment periods are like. In that fall conference, we typically will talk to the parents about what I've already mentioned before, which is, what the assessments are.

So the first conference, we talk a lot about that. We just set a precedent - I will be doing a standardized assessment and that that standardized assessment will inform all the information that I gather, and I will relay that information as accurately as possible. Then we break up our assessments from the Teaching Strategies GOLD into four categories: social-emotional development, cognitive skills, literacy, and gross and fine motor. So those are the four categories.

The social-emotional skills and cognitive sections I tell parents every time, at the very first conference, these are my primary work. The thing that I care about most is social-emotional development and I use play to explain how I understand cognitive development. So, everything we learn about a kid is generally from watching them play or watching them interact with others.

So, I talk a lot about what I expect or where we generally expect a kid to be socially, what space we expect to see them in. So being able to be dropped off in the morning with limited tears. There probably are some at the beginning. And then by the time we're having our first conference, generally speaking, those tears have resolved, and we're talking about how they relate to the teachers. We're talking about the friends that they play with, the styles of play that they tend to do.

And finally, we talk about how they resolve conflicts. We have, in my class, a pretty specific way of conflict resolution, and so, generally, October is a big month for explaining to children conflict resolution strategies. And they don't really have those skills down at that point, so we tell the parents, "It's not going to be... you shouldn't expect that your kid's capable of solving problems to the degree that some of kids who may have a little bit more experience in our class would solve problems."

Leigh Parise: I appreciate your description and I hope that the parents appreciate those conversations as well. So, when you think about how you communicate with parents about what their children are learning, about the kinds of assessments that you're doing in the classroom, are there any changes that you think could be made to the assessments to help make it easier for parents to understand their children's skills or their individual needs?

Brooks Wilson: I try to minimize some of that work by having that first conference focus so much on what is the assessment period, rather than where their kid places in the widely held expectations. I want families to understand the process of doing the assessments itself is, at the beginning of the year, sort of something that tells us as much information about where our whole cohort of kids is as opposed to just their individual kid. For example, COVID did a pretty significant number on kids' social-emotional development as well as having a pretty significant impact on kids who may have some speech delays.

Wearing masks all the time has contributed to some ongoing speech delays because, typically, some kids who learn about articulation learn that by watching mouths move. So, we really try to focus in on that first conference as being one where we catch parents up as to what assessments are and the power of assessments. The, doing the assessments itself is probably one of the least fun aspects of the job. But it is, I have come to learn, one of the most necessary parts of the job, because it both informs parents and it informs teachers.

Leigh Parise: Great. Will you say a little bit more about what makes it one of the least fun aspects of the job?

Brooks Wilson: It's just kind of a labor-intensive thing. I'm not the type of person who likes to be behind a computer. One of the reasons I chose this job is because it's sort of a proactive, on your feet all day, interacting with people type of job. I, generally speaking, like kids more than I like adults. It's just easier to like them. They don't think they know everything and so when you have to go behind a computer and sit there it takes 30 minutes per category to fill out these conference forms. It's just a a labor-intensive thing where you're sitting doing what amounts to me feeling like desk work that I just had avoided doing.

But I understand that, I mean, I understand that it's a necessary tool and I understand that it's going to inform my practice more my doing it. So, even though it's kind of a type of work that I don't like to do, I sort of understand that my role as a lead teacher is to do this type of work. So, I need to suck it up and do it.

Leigh Parise: Great. Brooks, how would you improve assessments?

Brooks Wilson: I kind of get the impression that a lot of the data being gathered is for statistical purposes with assessment tools. So, I think, it gathers a lot of data, and it gathers a lot of this academic data that we are doing in the classroom, but all of that stuff is, to me, quite secondary to getting kids socially prepared for the kindergarten environment. It continues to be common for parents to be concerned about pre-academic skills in literacy and math, but, as long as I've been doing it, I've also been coaching parents to understand that those skills aren't typically learned in preschool.

Lia Wilson: And a lot of parents, when they hear "curriculum" and "academic" in a preschool setting, they're assuming letter recognition. They're assuming having a word of the week things like that. But really, when we're talk- we are following a curriculum and there is academic learning happening, but it's more about getting children engaged in the learning. Getting them excited about learning something and giving them the skills to ask questions and to be curious and teach them how to find information and solve their problems.

Leigh Parise: Do you think that these assessments take time away from other important things in the classroom?

Lia Wilson: I feel like it can. For a lot of classrooms, especially in the early learning field, there is some planning time, but it's not as in a K-12 where the teachers get a chunk of the day to prepare for the next day. We get it maybe twice a week, a few hours here and there. And I feel like, for some classrooms, for teachers who maybe don't enjoy doing the computer side of work, it can take away from the time spent in the classroom and can feel like an incredibly arduous task when you maybe don't have the staffing to step out for a little while. I'm sure you can speak to that more than I can.

Brooks Wilson: Yeah. I would love two times a week to plan, but, yeah, we, we are living with the restrictions of having not….I mean, we have a lot of staff  at our school, but, you know, just generally speaking, our field is not fully staffed. And just all teaching fields are not as fully staffed as they need to be. And so, you really have to carve out your windows to do assessments and stuff like that.

Additionally, I think that having the appropriate amount of planning time doesn't include just assessments but also includes planning for the next study or planning for activities or even planning for where the focus might refine to. You have to create some expectations about how you're going to pivot if you need to pivot. And generally, you will have to pivot. You have to expect that things are going to change and they often do. So, planning time, it's kind of a thing you just wish you had.

But I don't feel like it detracts from our classroom experience because, for the most part, we're having the teacher meetings and stuff like that on the fly. Talking with our teaching team, delegating responsibilities and stuff like that. A really effective classroom is going to make sure that each person has a certain job that they do. I do a lot the planning, I do a lot the assessments, and my teaching team does a lot of the documentation. And my teaching team does a lot of small group stuff whereas I do big group stuff. So, a really effective team kind of has their responsibilities delegated out so that they don't lose the opportunity to meet their class in person with that sort of joy that makes the job fun.

I would much rather be in class enjoying the company of the kids and my teaching team than doing assessments, but when I have to do assessments, I want to be able to just get right in there and focus on that as my primary task because I don't want to spend more time on it than I need to.

Leigh Parise: Yeah, right. That makes all kinds of sense. In your ideal world, what is one thing that you would do to strengthen the pre-K assessment process?

Lia Wilson: I would have it be more integrated. I don't know how this could happen, but find a way to take all the documentation that we're doing everyday, anecdotal records, samples, work samples from the children, and being able to input it all over the course of time and have it give you the information instead of having to do all that, and also having to sit down for several hours and complete this giant checklist.

Brooks Wilson: Yeah. For me, I think one of the things that would make the assessment periods easier on the teachers is having the parents more aware of the widely held expectations.

Lia Wilson: Exactly.

Brooks Wilson: That's a big challenge, is having to communicate that there are different developmental checkpoints and that there's actually a pretty big range of pretty acceptable checkpoints. That if I gave you a one to seven that anywhere between three and five are right, are typical, and that beyond five might be a kid who's either performing ahead of pace of his cohort and that before the number three, that's a kid who's not keeping up with pace. Having parents understand that there's a spectrum of development, and that their kid may jump a couple paces on that, too. So that would be an amazing, amazing way for families and teachers to work together.

But this requires having families, A, invest their own time in understanding what these assessment forms are. And B, it's like, having parents understand certain developmental milestones that we teachers are supposed to be trained to understand in a way that's different than a typical person who's not in our field. So, I honestly can't say I'd be surprised if a lot of parents declined the opportunity to sort of indulge themselves in all that info.

Leigh Parise: Great. Well, you both had some caveats in there of like, "I don't know if this could be done," but you live it everyday, and so it is really good to just hear from you, like, look, in an ideal world this is what would happen, and this is what would, this is what they'd look like.

Leigh Parise: Lia and Brooks, thank you so much for joining us. This was really great to have this conversation today.

Lia Wilson: Thank you so much.

Leigh Parise: Researchers at MDRC are gathering information about pre-K assessments from folks like today’s guests to think about ways to strengthen pre-K assessments. MDRC’s Measures for Early Success initiative will use these important insights to design and test pre-K assessment tools that are more equitable, more useful to educators and parents, and more effective for informing policy decisions. Stay tuned for more work on this project from MDRC and collaborators.                        

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