Child Assessment

Child Assessment

Introduction

Child assessment has received a widespread attention from various circles including education, psychology and health. In fact, different governmental agencies, non-profit and other organizations such as educational institutions conduct child assessment activities in order to provide the children with better development and to improve their learning (Sattler & Hoge, 2005). These assessments aim to improve the language, social, and academic skills of these children. Furthermore, these assessments also identify the children who may be special and will require accordingly care and education.

These assessments are mostly conducted in the social, family, and educational context of these children. Additionally, the schools are also being regulated to develop such learning and development programs to address the needs of the children (Lowenstein, 2008). Then the schools are also being made accountable for accurate and correct child assessments for determining their accurate education and development needs (Sattler & Hoge, 2005). Moreover, the government has also taken special care of children so that they get assessed for better upbringing, care and education. Therefore, the government has enacted multiple laws to improve the education of children and their overall well-being.

Various assessment tools have been developed that observe children at play. These tools attempt to observe the ability of the children with respect to their learning and development. These have direct implications for their early education programs. Further, these act as continual reminders for the educationists to further refine their educational approaches with respect to the child. In this way, the children are given higher level of consideration to ensure that they develop into productive and healthy individuals of the society (Sattler & Hoge, 2005).

Issues in Child Assessment

There are multiple issues that are faced while doing child assessment. These range from the formative to the summative issues (Gordon & Schroeder, 2002). All in all, there have been concerns regarding the effectiveness of various tests done to assess the children's abilities for children under the age of 8. It has been found that these assessment tests have certain negative effects on these children. These negative effects include the deterioration of children's school achievement outcomes. These have been specifically linked to the tests conducted to determine the children's grades, such as the SATs, or other tests conducted for assessing and developing child school retention (Stevens and DeBord, 2001).

Further, it is argued that the most essential issues of assessment of children relate to determining the readiness of children and their relationships with their families and other childcare providers. Therefore, it must be understood that these assessments of children are not mere testing. Contrarily, these assessments need to be the basis for their development needs and for providing them with continued support and discovery which is ongoing (Gordon & Schroeder, 2002). In this way, this process needs to be all-inclusive and forms the basis for the observation and the analysis of these children. Therefore, the children only need to be assessed in the context with parents, educational situation, and other caregivers. This will ensure that the issue of determining ...