Validity of an Online Assessment to Appraise Teacher Progress Monitoring Ability

Ongoing professional development is a critical component of high-quality early childhood education systems. To guide the content of such professional development, teacher and classroom quality assessments are often used. These assessments generally address universal or tier 1 instruction but omit information to guide teachers’ practices to support children with disabilities. In addition, these assessments can be particularly onerous to deliver given that they require direct observation by a trained rater. As a step toward supporting the professional development of teachers serving children with disabilities, we evaluated a revised version of a newly developed resource-sensitive assessment called the Brief Preschool Progress Monitoring Measure. The assessment functioned as an online, test-based measure, to be completed by a teacher. The assessment provided information about teachers’ abilities with collecting and using progress monitoring data to individualize instruction for children needing interventions and supports beyond those typically provided at tier 1 of a support system. Using Rasch analysis, findings revealed strong unidimensionality and item reliability, though limitations exist in detecting extreme ability levels. The revised assessment demonstrates potential as a tool for supporting targeted professional development initiatives and program evaluation in early childhood education but should not be incorporated into teacher accountability systems.