What is the Portrait of Child Outcomes?
The Portrait is a grass roots initiative with Assessment Technology Inc. in which Head Start programs are joining together, pooling their data, and sharing information with the public about children’s learning and development. The role of Assessment Technology Inc. is to aggregate data gathered by programs and to display the data in reports documenting children’s learning. Portrait data are recorded online, and are available in real time for reporting purposes. Thus, there is a unique opportunity to provide a changing portrait of outcomes reflecting the course of children’s learning throughout the program year.
How is the Portrait Taken?
The principal reason for gathering data on children’s learning is to promote children’s learning. For participating programs, the assessment process is an integral and ongoing activity to help inform decision-making related to goal setting, planning, and the provision of learning opportunities for children. Teachers in participating programs gather the data on children’s learning as part of their continuing efforts to determine the developmental needs of the children in their charge. The teacher’s primary use of the data is to plan learning opportunities that will promote each child’s development. Data is gathered mainly through direct observation. However, other data sources such as samples of children’s work are also used to assess the children.
Portrait Potential
Head Start programs throughout the nation are already using information on child outcomes in new ways to improve learning. It is the goal of participating programs and the goal of Assessment Technology Inc. that the information provided through the Portrait will be helpful to Head Start programs, policy-makers, researchers, parents, and all of those individuals who are concerned with and dedicated to the challenge of promoting the development of our nation’s children.
Reports
The Portrait of Child Outcomes consists of five types of illustrative reports on children’s learning. These reports provide data from the complete Galileo v2 assessment scales which are aligned with the Head Start Child Outcome Framework.
Development Profile The Development Profile provides a good starting point for examining what Head Start children are learning now and what they will be prepared to learn as development progresses. This report provides information on all the capabilities included within a given developmental area (e.g., Language and Literacy) assessed with Galileo. The Development Profile shows how many children have acquired each of the capabilities in a developmental area. In addition, it shows how many children are ready now, soon, or later to learn the other capabilities. To view this report click on “Run Report.”
Development Milestone This report provides information on specific subsets of goals within a given area of development (e.g., Language and Literacy). The Development Milestone shows the percentage of children that have learned each selected capability. In addition, it shows the percentage of children ready now, soon, or later to learn those capabilities.
Development Summary The Development Summary gives a series of four scores that summarize child outcomes. Three of the scores are norm-referenced scores. These scores indicate position in a norm group based on the standardization sample for the scale under examination. The fourth score is the Developmental Level (DL) score, which indicates position in the norm group based on the standardization sample and position in a developmental progression comprised of the capabilities being assessed. The developmental level score, which is computed using Item Response Theory techniques, is particularly useful for measuring development. For more information on these scores, see The Galileo System for the Electronic Management of Learning, which can be viewed or down loaded from this website.
Achievement Report This report indicates the number of children who have reached each achievement level set by the program for a given developmental area (e.g., Early Math) assessed using the Galileo Scales. The Achievement Report can be viewed as a precursor to the Progress Report.
Progress Report The Progress Report shows the number of children who are at different achievement levels (e.g., beginning, intermediate, advanced) at successive points in time (e.g., fall, winter, spring).
Note: Galileo Online works best with Microsoft Internet Explorer. For details, see System Requirements.
Reports are displayed in PDF format. In order to view these reports you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. If you do not, it can be downloaded for free from Adobe.
A Word of Thanks to the Participants
Over 30 Head Start programs representing several states have joined together to create and share an important story about themselves and about children's accomplishments. We at ATI are privileged to have the opportunity to bring their story to you. A special thanks to all who have contributed to the Portrait. Their success, spirit, and foresight made this Head Start family portrait possible!