For many primary-grade teachers, assessments have become top-down mandates, imposed by a school district or state. Required, formal assessments are often tightly bound to academic standards and, to ensure fidelity, come with scripted protocols and strict administrative timelines. Because of intensified pressure on teachers to improve students’ performance and prepare them for standardized tests( Stanford 2023), educators and children are now navigating a significant increase in the number of formal assessments they experience yearly( Bassok et al. 2016). At the same time, teachers are tasked with assessing children informally to gauge their skills and interests and to inform curricular planning( Scott-Little & Reschke 2022). Yet they may struggle to integrate meaningful and manageable assessment practices within their busy learning days( e. g., Petronglo 2022).
When assessment is viewed as something separate from instruction— something that happens after teaching rather than during— it can feel disconnected or even burdensome. Additionally, assessment practices that are unresponsive to children’ s cultures, languages, abilities, and prior experiences prevent children from fully demonstrating their knowledge and skills( Jones et al. 2023; NAEYC 2025). However, when teachers view assessment as part of their everyday decision making and have the agency to make sure that it is developmentally, culturally, and linguistically appropriate, it becomes a meaningful and ongoing process that supports equitable teaching and learning( Kidd et al. 2019; NAEYC 2019; Becker et al. 2023).
As teacher educators, we( the authors) work alongside early childhood practitioners who are pursuing graduate-level coursework focused on promoting culturally, linguistically, and developmentally responsive assessment practices. In our courses, we are particularly interested in developing educators’ agency to advocate for all children, including those who are often marginalized in assessment and instructional practices. These include children who are neurodivergent, multilingual, or who qualify for early childhood special education services.
In this article, we offer insights for early childhood educators who are navigating assessment systems that often feel misaligned with developmentally appropriate practices. The voices we share come directly from the teachers we worked with as part of the first author’ s research study, in which they talked about their thinking and approaches to assessment. We share their insights to highlight examples of how primary-grade educators can use agency to reclaim formal and informal assessments as tools for illuminating children’ s individual strengths.
( Re) Framing Assessment as a Tool for Intentional Teaching
Assessment is the systematic process educators use to make informed decisions about children’ s development and learning. This includes observation and documentation to gather, analyze, and monitor students’ progress toward learning goals and to adjust and improve teaching practices( NAEYC 2020; Scott-Little & Reschke 2022). Educators use both formal and informal assessments to document students’ growth and to support their physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development in meaningful ways( NAEYC 2025). Formal assessments provide standardized benchmarks that measure what a child has learned. These include standardized tests, screenings, and diagnostic evaluations. Informal assessments most directly inform daily instructional decisions. These include children’ s work samples and educators’ observations and anecdotal notes( NAEYC 2020).
Assessment is a professional responsibility and an essential part of the work teachers do to engage with young children( Xu & Brown 2016; Scott-Little & Reschke 2022; Becker et al. 2023). It should be
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