Quality of Professional Practice

The widespread and systematic use of standardized observation in classrooms from pre-kindergarten to third grade has the potential to address major shortcomings in educational services provided to young children.

This article is reprinted from the March/April 2007 issue of the Harvard Education Letter.

In Building a Science of Classrooms, Hamre, Pianta, Mashburn, and Downer present a scientific framework to assess classroom quality from PreK through Third Grade.

Phillips, Gormley, and Lowenstein compare and contrast characteristics of Tulsa UPK classrooms to a sample of state-funded PK classrooms in seven states in Classroom Quality and Time Allocation in Tulsa’s Early Childhood Programs.

The final report of the National Early Childhood Accountability Task Force, Taking Stock: Assessing and Improving Early Childhood Learning and Program Quality, recommends developing a comprehensive assessment system to improve child outcomes.

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 PreK-3rd programs by providing a common metric for documenting what goes on in classrooms from grade to grade.

The creators of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) recently released a Policy Brief, Effective Teacher-Student Interactions.

In the May/June 2009 issue of the Harvard Education Letter, David McKay Wilson identifies key principles for PreK-3rd in Developmentally Appropriate Practice in the Age of Testing.