FAQs for EYE Researchers – earlyyearsevaluation

How were the items selected for the TA?

Dr. Willms and his research team have examined hundreds of skills that researchers and teachers consider important for children’s success at school and have amassed data from thousands of children on their ability to do tasks related to these skills. These Dr. Willms research has received support from organisations such as the World Bank and Human Resources and Skills Development Canada.

additional references to UNESCO and UNICEF?
general discussion of measure development process, statistical and psychometric analyses
started with a big bank; would have tested to narrow down
find details on this
the development of the tool would have been focused on what items work together to measure the construct (i.e. Cognitive Skills). not as concerned with the specific skills of each individual item

How can I be sure the assessment is being administered in the same way across my jurisdiction?

-Internal consistency is not inter-rater, do we have anything related to inter-rater reliability in any of the PhD studies?
-anything in the Consistency doc about recommendations?
- clean up ASM TEAM comments - make clear distinction between internal and inter-rater
- why we have training, increasing conistency doc, many resources, best practices, etc. Bottom line: the measures are reliable, but we can't control Inter-rater reliability - can provide as much support as we can, but up to strong leadership on the client's part to ensure consistency between evaluators
- what's important is that the individual classroom teacher is consistent with all of the children in their class, over time. they are the ones who use the results on the ground

short explanation (reliability coefficients, and how to ensure inter-rater reliability), then link to the resource for further information

Why is the Gross Motor sub-domain not included in the RTI Score calculation?

References re: domain selection:
- Nevertheless, consensus has emerged among the majority of researchers within the field. The Education for All Global Monitoring Report (UNESCO, 2006) noted that “the consensus from research is that school readiness encompasses development in five distinct but interconnected domains” (p. 163): physical well-being and motor development, social and emotional development, approaches to learning, language development, and cognitive development. In their toolkit for assessment of early child development in low-income countries, Fernald, Kariger, Engle and Raikes (2009), called for assessment in the following domains: cognitive skills, executive function, language skills, motor skills, and social and emotional skills.
- The selection of domains for the EYE-TA was influenced by the goals of the U.S. National Education Goals Panel (Shepard, Kagan, & Wurtz, 1998) and by a report on national school readiness indicators developed by a 17-state partnership (Rhode Island Kids Count (Organisation), 2005).
- During the period from birth to age 2, for example, interactions with parents and other caregivers is critical for children’s development of language and self-regulation skills (McClelland et. al., 2010).
- A long-standing model for school readiness, stemming from the work of the U.S. National Education Goals Panel, includes five domains: physical well-being and motor development, social and emotional development, approaches to learning, language development and cognition and general knowledge (Barnett, Ayers and Francis, 2015; Kagan, Moore and Bredekamp, 1995; National Early Literacy Panel, 2008).
- The link between cognitive and language skills at age 5 with reading skills at age 8 or 9 are well established (Deary, Strand, Smith and Fernandes, 2007; Duncan et al., 2007; McClelland, Morrison and Holmes, 2000; Raver et al., 2011; Rose, 2006). Oral language skills and cognitive ability are especially important (Scarborough, 2001). Attention and self-regulation are also key and appear to be more important than problematic externalising behaviours (Trezesniewski, Moffit, Caspi, Taylor and Maughan, 2006).

Kindergarten cut-off ages vary across the country. What age range was used to established the baseline scores for the EYE-TA?

- purpose of TA is to assess Grade ONE readiness; domain results are not age normed, simply represents whether or not they meet grade one skill requirements

The findings are based on a longitudinal study which involved data for over 1,800 children in five school districts

who were assessed in kindergarten with the EYE-TA. At the end of grade 2, these children completed province-
wide assessments of oral and written reading ability. A logistic regression model was fit to the data to estimate

the probability that each child successfully reached the ‘acceptable’ level on the provincial assessment. These
probabilities were used to establish three levels of risk for determining which children should receive a
moderate (Tier 2) or intensive (Tier 3) intervention in a Responsive Tiered Instruction (RTI) model.