Those Who Have a Stake in the Assessment of Young Children

Those who have a stake in the assessment are the children, the teachers, the parents, the administrators, the policymakers (e.g., school board members), and others who need or desire assessment information. Of this group, those intimately concerned about the status and progress of individual children are:

• Children, who are the focus and who should be the beneficiaries of educational efforts, including evaluation.

• Teachers, who are the primary assessors and must keep track of both individual children and the group of children they teach.

• Parents, who have the greatest need for information about their own children--how they are progressing, whether they are achieving the objectives of the program, how the teacher is working with them, and how the parents can help.

Hills (1992) notes that other stakeholders have different concerns about assessment:

"Administrators, policy boards, government officials, and others have legitimate needs for assessment information related to programs and large groups of children; their needs are extensive, not intensive, and unrelated to data on individual children." (p. 45)

In contrast to parents (whose interests center on their own children) and to teachers (whose interests are both with the individual children and the overall progress of the group), administrators need quantified information only on groups of children. Engel (1990) believes that year-end anecdotal class summaries prepared by the teacher can be useful to administrators. For example, she discusses ways that results of assessment of oral reading and literacy inventories can be summarized in tables and graphs.

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