Tailored Teaching: Teachers' Use of Ongoing Child Assessment to Individualize Instruction (Volume I)

In 2012, the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation within the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, engaged Mathematica and its partners to conduct a project titled “Assessing Early Childhood Teachers’ Use of Child Progress Monitoring to Individualize Teaching Practices.” The purpose of the project is twofold: (1) to develop a conceptual framework of early childhood teachers’ use of ongoing child assessment to individualize instruction and (2) to create a measure to examine this process. Besides defining the key aspects of ongoing assessment and individualization, we are also seeking ways to efficiently examine how they are carried out. The ultimate goal is to help teachers conduct ongoing assessments, use the assessment data to “individualize” instruction for each child, and enhance their children’s outcomes.