Establishing Time-Continuous Normative Scores for Teaching Strategies GOLD Using a Multilevel Growth Curve Modeling Approach

Young children are assessed to meet federal mandates and inform policy decisions, provide teachers with useful information to make instructional decisions and set reasonable learning goals, and facilitate communication with families. While young children are frequently assessed using whole-child assessments which often yield criterion-referenced score interpretations, norm-referenced score interpretations can help teachers understand relative performance and set reasonable goals for growth. Although researchers have provided validity evidence for both criterion- and norm-referenced score interpretations for one widely used early childhood assessment, GOLD®, current national normative scores lack precision for several reasons, including the use of two-time-point and cross-sectional data. To improve estimates, a nationally representative sample of assessment records from 18,000 children ages birth through kindergarten was fitted to a series of hierarchical linear models (HLMs) to establish normative estimates conditional on months of age or instruction. Secondary study purposes included making inferences about the nature of growth from birth through kindergarten, providing evidence of the most effective time metric for modeling developmental growth, and examining the relationship between child-level characteristics and normative scores. Results indicated that a) HLMs provide reasonably valid normative ability and growth estimates, b) developmental growth, as measured by GOLD®, from birth through kindergarten is non-linear, c) the most effective time metric depends on the age band and domain of development, and d) child-level characteristics, including, race/ethnicity, gender, and primary language are associated with significantly different patterns of preliminary performance and growth for children who are one- or two-years of age or older.