What to assess when you're not assessing

Assessments in early childhood education are critical to gauging the effectiveness of programs and for finding ways to improve. But these assessments, during COVID-19 times, are simply a formality. The assessment data is a programmatic requirement that takes much effort. Even though I and many other administrators are spending hours upon hours meeting contractual obligations with data entry, uploading data, data analysis, and reporting - should we use this data at all?

First, assessments are not a fair assessment on students when they are not conducted as recommended. In early childhood education, many assessments are observation-based. Is Zoom a proper tool for observation? Probably not. I’m not saying that tele-observations will never work just that the assessment tools we have now were not designed for this.

Second, assessments are not a fair assessment on programs, or more specifically, teachers. We are all getting by right now and this paperwork is busy work. We’re asking teachers to teach and assess in a way they never have before.

Assessments might be a nice exercise in muscle memory so programs keep up the practice. I, for one, am a proponent for data analysis to drive broad-scale decision-making and individualization. Assessment data is programmatically important but to what end? To the point where everyone goes through the motions and have problematic data to painstakingly analyze?

This year is a wash for early childhood data. Let us get through these dark times with dignity and never look at program year 2020-21 data again.