Curriculum and Assessment Supports for Early Childhood

According to the Ohio Department of Education's website, curriculum, standards and assessment alignment is the process of linking curriculum, assessment and progress-monitoring with Ohio’s Early Learning and Development Standards in all domains. To accomplish this, early childhood programs must be thoughtful about the selection of their curriculum and their assessment process. The ODE website provides tools and information on selecting a curriculum and aligning curriculum, standards and assessments.

The Region 12 SST is also available to support early childhood programs who would like to examine their curriculum to ensure it is aligned to standards and assessments. The SST can provide technical assistance, coaching and professional learning to support curriculum-standards-assessment alignment.

Birth Through Kindergarten Entry Learning Standards

Birth Through Kindergarten Entry Learning and Development Standards describe key concepts and skills that young children develop during the birth-to-five-year period. Their purpose is to support the development and well-being of young children and to foster their learning.

The standards promote the understanding of early learning and development, provide a comprehensive and coherent set of early childhood educational expectations for children’s development and learning, and guide the design and implementation of curriculum, assessment and instructional practices with young children.

Early Learning Assessment (ELA)

The Early Learning Assessment (ELA) is a formative assessment that captures information about young children’s development across multiple learning domains. The ELA is administered to all preschool children who are attending program sites funded by the Ohio Department of Education and is designed to be used throughout the school year to track individual children’s growth.

The Region 12 SST offers training to new early learning professionals on the administration and use of the ELA. Offerings can be found in our professional learning calendar.

Kindergarten

Kindergarten entry questions are addressed on the Ohio Department of Education website and outline the state's requirements for districts in offering kindergarten to their students.

Ohio's Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (KRA) measures a child’s school readiness in multiple learning domains. All children in kindergarten take the assessment from the first day of school through November 1. The results of the assessment provide information for teachers to begin to plan individualized instruction for each child. The results do not prohibit any child from entering Kindergarten.

The language and literacy portion of the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment will meet the reading diagnostic assessment requirement of the Third Grade Reading Guarantee.

Beginning with the Fall 2020 school year, districts and community schools will administer the new Kindergarten Readiness Assessment-Revised. More information will be available soon.

Resources

INFOhio

Ohio Association for the Education of Young Children (OAEYC)

National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)

Kindergarten Readiness Checklist