In a recent Harvard Education Letter interview, Robert Pianta, Dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, discusses the value of the Classroom Assessing Scoring system, a classroom observation instrument known as CLASS.  CLASS can be an important part of professional development efforts to create high quality learning experiences for children in PK-3 programs by providing a common metric for documenting what goes on in classrooms from grade to grade.

This article is part of an ongoing series of the importance of integrating high quality PK with the early elementary education of children.