ECA
Associates


A Pre-Assessment Guide for Evaluating
The Social-Emotional Skills of African American Children
in
Head Start and Day Care Pre-School Programs

INTRODUCTION

This assessment tool is called "A Pre-Assessment Guide for Evaluating the Social-Emotional Skills of African American Children in Head Start and Day Care Pre-School Programs."

This guide is designed to be used by pre-school Program Directors in their developing of curricula for their student population and for pre-school teachers in the planning of yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily planning of activities that include a focus on the socio-emotional skills of African American children.

In addition, this guide can be used by parents in evaluating the socio-emotional skill levels of their child(ren) in preparation for planning more systematic and more indepth educational activities and experiences in the child(ren)'s quest to achieve optimal positive human growth and development skills.

The use of the guide is fairly simple in that the teacher can begin completing the assessment on each child as early as 30 days after the program year has begun or after the child has been enrolled in the classroom for a minimum of 30 days.

It is advised that the assessment be completed again 6 months after the beginning of the program year. This assessment will provide the necessary data to give the teacher a picture as to whether the sequentially planned activities are actually bringing about the desired learning behaviors.

Parents are advised to complete the assessment on a quarterly basis because the population is considerably smaller and adjustments can be made more readily to modify the sequentially planned activities and experiences.

The rules for completing the assessment are based on the direct observations and interactions of the teacher(s) with the children in the classroom and the ability of the teacher to ask the appropriate questions in a manner [i.e. - inflections, pronunciations, voice tone, and body movement] that is most comfortable for the children. Consequently, all of the yes or no responses may take more than one or even two settings to complete the entire assessment.

Parents are advised to use the parental edge [unconditional trust] in completing the assessment. Therefore, the number of settings required to complete the assess really depends on the quality of the bonding between parent and child(ren). It make take fewer or more settings to complete the assessment.

The responses for the child(ren) are basically yes, no, or sometimes. When you have serious doubts about whether the child(ren) understood the question after you've given it your "best shot," put no and cite the qualification on the NOTES page.

The child(ren)'s responses are to be evaluated by using the following scale to properly assess socio-emotional skill levels [SESL] of the child(ren):

SCALE
100% - 75% Yes
74% - 50% Sometimes
49% - 0% No

After each section,

  1. You record the number for each of the response categories: Yes, No, or Sometimes.
  2. Next after you have completed all of the four categories, you total the Yes's, No's, and Sometimes
  3. Then you use the Evaluation Scale to determine the poing value of the responses.
  4. You use the Assessment Scale to determine the SESL by selecting the Assessment Level within the appropriate range.

For Example,

STEP I. RECORD REPONSE TOTALS

SELF-IMAGE SELF-CONCEPT SELF-RESPECT SELF-ESTEEM
A.YES15 YES10 YES5 YES20
B.SOMETIMES5 SOMETIMES10 SOMETIMES15 SOMETIMES0
C.NO5 NO5 NO5 NO5

STEP II. TOTAL RESPONSES
TOTALS
A. YES 50
B. SOMETIMES 30
C. NO 20
100

STEP III - EVALUATION SCALE:

The scores shown in Step II are measured by the following interpretation of the pre-assessment data:
YES Responses Evaluation Scale
RESPONSES EVALUATION
SCALE		 POINTS
100-75 25
74-50 2020
49-25 15
24-0 10
SOMETIMES Responses Evaluation Scale
RESPONSES EVALUATION
SCALE		 POINTS
100-75 20
74-50 15
49-25 1010
24-0 5
NO Responses Evaluation Scale
RESPONSES EVALUATION
SCALE		 POINTS
100-75 0
74-50 5
49-25 10
24-0 1515
TOTAL POINTS 45

STEP IV. ASSESSMENT SCALE

TOTAL POINTSASSESSMENT LEVELS
A100 - 80Very High SESL
B79 - 60High SESL
C59 - 40Average SESL
D39 - 20Low SESL
E19 - 0Very Low SESL

STEP V. THE ASSESSMENT SCORE of 45 SHOWS an AVERAGE SESL for our example.

Upon completion of collecting the data for an entire program, individual classroom or the individual child, you send only the results of the data collected for each of the categories [self-image, self-concept, self-respect, and self-esteem] and the Final Evaluation Pre-Assessment to

SESL Assessment
ECA Associates P.O. Box 15004
Great Bridge Station
Chesapeake, VA 23328

documents may also be sent in Microsoft Word format to the Watoto World ftp site (under construction) -- individual assessments may be completed on-line (under construction).

Upon receipt of your data, ECA Associates will provide you with a general plan of activities for your program or individual child(ren).

Our rate schedule is as follows:
SESL Assessment Rate Schedule
1.For a brief overviewNO CHARGE
2.For a series of planned activities and recommended experiences per child $100.00
3. For a series of planned activities and recommended experiences for a classroom [Maximum 20 children] $1000.00
4. For a series of planned activities and recommended experiences for a pre-school program [No Maximum] $2000.00

ON TO THE ASSESSMENT QUESTIONNAIRE

© ECA Associates