Efficiency in Assessing Emergent Literacy Skills in Students Attending Head Start

Abstract

Research has indicated that development of reading skills begins very early in a child's life, suggesting that skill development should be closely monitored during the preschool years. However, assessment with the young child presents unique challenges, as results can be influenced by the child's emotional state and the conditions of testing, including lengthy administration. Assessments should be efficient and economical, producing the best results with the expenditure of minimum time and resources. The purpose of this study was to examine three measures of emergent literacy that were administered to 4-year-old students attending a Head Start program. It was hypothesized that tasks purporting to assess the same skills would evidence redundancy, suggesting that not all of the tasks were necessary for administration. Results indicated that although correlations between the tasks from the three measures were low to moderate, there was overlap, indicating that administration of all three measures may not have been necessary.