The Desired Results Developmental Profile (DRDP) is a comprehensive assessment tool used by early childhood educators to observe and document children's developmental progress. It provides a structured roadmap for tracking physical, cognitive, social, and emotional milestones from infancy through preschool to ensure children are prepared for kindergarten.
Early childhood educators and caregivers can use the DRDP to observe and assess infants and young children as they learn new skills and behaviors. According to early education standards, the DRDP gives educators a roadmap of the milestones children should meet from infancy through preschool to be physically, cognitively, socially, and emotionally prepared for kindergarten.
Brightwheel's Experience Assessments is designed to help educators document, track, and understand each child’s unique developmental journey. This research-backed system simplifies progress tracking by enabling natural observation capture during daily routines, regardless of the curriculum used—all in one intuitive platform. Aligned with the DRDP framework and other state standards, it allows educators to assign benchmarks digitally, view visual growth reports, and share updates with families seamlessly.
What is the DRDP assessment?
The Desired Results Developmental Profile (DRDP) is an observation-based assessment instrument that measures children’s school readiness across various developmental domains. By observing children in natural settings, educators use the DRDP to track progress toward six desired results for children and families.
The DRDP assessment measures progress on six desired results for children and families:
- Children are personally and socially competent
- Children are effective learners
- Children show physical and motor competence
- Children are safe and healthy
- Families support their child’s learning and development
- Families achieve their goals
You can use the DRDP to observe children's behaviors in a natural environment and track each child's progress toward the desired results.
What is the purpose of the DRDP assessment in early childhood education?
The primary purpose of the DRDP assessment is to help early childhood educators evaluate the development of children in their program, which in turn improves the overall quality of services provided to children and families. Originally developed by the state of California and funded by the California Department of Social Services (CDSS), it aligns with national early learning standards.
The assessment helps educators observe, document, and measure each child's progress towards desired outcomes. Although it was originally developed in California, the DRDP is aligned with many other states' early learning standards and other states such as Minnesota have adopted use of the DRDP as an official assessment tool.
You can use the results of the DRDP assessment to develop a curriculum that addresses the developmental needs of every child in your childcare program. A tool like brightwheel's lesson plan feature is pre-loaded with state learning standards to help save you time as you plan.
Daily Lesson Plan Template
Use this template to develop effective lesson plans for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.
What are the DRDP domains and measures?
The DRDP assessment consists of eight specific domains that align with early learning foundations, each containing specific measures used to evaluate a child's observed behavior and acquired skills. These domains align directly with the California Department of Education’s Early Learning and Development Foundations.
The DRDP assessment helps educators evaluate each child's progress as they acquire knowledge, skills, and behaviors that reflect each domain’s developmental construct. Each DRDP domain contains several measures. Measures are developmental criteria along which a child’s observed behavior is assessed. The DRDP includes the below measures:
- Earlier development measures: Applicable for children from early infancy through early preschool.
- Later development measures: Applicable for children from early preschool to kindergarten entry.
- Full continuum measures: Applicable for children from early infancy all the way to kindergarten. Educators should use these measures with all infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.
- Conditional measures: Applicable only in certain circumstances. For example, English-Language Development measures only apply if a child does not hear English at home.
Below, we’ll discuss the eight domains that comprise the Desired Results Developmental Profile.
Approaches to Learning—Self-Regulation (ATL-REG)
The ATL-REG domain of the DRDP assesses young children's approaches to learning and their ability to regulate their own emotions and behaviors. This domain tracks essential self-regulation skills.
The measures that a child should master in the ATL-REG domain are:
- Attention maintenance: A child pays attention to people, things, or the environment when interacting with others or exploring play materials.
- Self-comforting: A child comforts or soothes themself in response to distress from internal or external stimulation.
- Imitation: A child mirrors, repeats, and practices the actions or words of others in increasingly complex ways.
- Curiosity and initiative: A child explores the environment in increasingly focused ways to learn about people, things, materials, and events.
- Self-control of feelings and behavior: A child develops strategies for regulating their emotions and behavior, becoming less reliant on adult guidance over time.
- Engagement and persistence: A child continues trying to understand or master activities, even if they are challenging or difficult.
- Shared use of space and materials: A child shares the use of space and materials with others.
Social and Emotional Development (SED)
The SED domain of the DRDP evaluates a young child's ability to understand their own identity, interact with peers, and form relationships with familiar adults.
The measures that a child should master in the SED domain are:
- Identity of self in relation to others: A child is aware of themself as distinct from, and related to, others.
- Social and emotional understanding: A child understands people’s behaviors, feelings, thoughts, and individual characteristics.
- Relationships and social interactions with familiar adults: A child develops close relationships with one or more familiar adults (including family members) and interacts in an increasingly competent and cooperative manner with them.
- Relationships and social interactions with peers: A child cooperates in interactions with peers and develops several friendships.
- Symbolic and sociodramatic play: A child uses objects to represent other objects (or ideas) and to engage in symbolic play with others.
Language and Literacy Development (LLD)
The LLD domain of the DRDP assesses a child's receptive and expressive language skills, as well as their emerging interest in reading and writing in their first language.
The measures that a child should master in the LLD domain are:
- Understanding of language (receptive): A child understands increasingly complex communication and language.
- Responsiveness to language: A child communicates or acts in response to language and responds to increasingly complex language.
- Communication and use of language (expressive): A child's communication develops from nonverbal communication to using language with increasingly complex words and sentences.
- Reciprocal communication and conversation: A child engages in back-and-forth communication that develops into increasingly extended conversations.
- Interest in literacy: A child shows interest in books, songs, rhymes, stories, and other literacy activities in increasingly complex ways.
- Comprehension of age-appropriate text: A child develops the capacity to understand details and ideas from age-appropriate texts presented by adults.
- Concepts about print: A child shows an increasing understanding of the conventions and physical organization of print material and that print carries meaning.
- Phonological awareness: A child shows increasing awareness of the sounds that make up language, including the ability to manipulate them in language.
- Letter and word knowledge: A child shows increasing awareness of letters in the environment and their relationship to sound, including understanding that letters make up words.
- Emergent writing: A child shows an increasing ability to write using scribbles, marks, drawings, letters, characters, or words to represent meaning.
English-Language Development (ELD)
The ELD domain of the DRDP assesses the English-language progress of dual-language learners. The same measures assessed in the Language and Literacy Development domain are utilized here to track how children who speak more than one language are acquiring English skills.
Cognition, Including Math and Science (COG)
The COG domain of the DRDP assesses young children's cognitive abilities, specifically focusing on their foundational math, science, and reasoning skills.
The measures that a child should master in the COG domain are:
- Spatial relationships: A child increasingly shows an understanding of how objects move in space or fit in different spaces.
- Classification: A child shows an increasing ability to compare, match, and sort objects into groups according to their attributes.
- Number sense of quantity: A child shows a developing understanding of numbers and quantities.
- Number sense of math operations: A child shows an increasing ability to add and subtract small quantities of objects.
- Measurement: A child shows an increasing understanding of measurable properties such as size, length, weight, and volume and how to quantify those properties.
- Patterning: A child shows an increasing ability to recognize, reproduce, and create patterns of varying complexity.
- Shapes: A child shows an increasing knowledge of shapes and their characteristics.
- Cause and effect: A child demonstrates an increasing ability to observe, anticipate, and reason about the relationship between cause and effect.
- Inquiry through observation and investigation: A child observes, explores, and investigates objects and events in the environment and becomes increasingly sophisticated in pursuing knowledge about them.
- Documentation and communication of inquiry: A child describes and records observations and investigations about objects and events while sharing ideas and explanations with others.
- Knowledge of the natural world: A child understands objects and events in the natural world, including how they change and their characteristics.
Physical Development—Health (PD-HLTH)
The PD-HLTH domain of the DRDP assesses young children's gross and fine motor development, alongside their mastery of personal care, safety, and nutrition routines.
The measures that a child should master in the PD-HLTH domain are:
- Perceptual-motor skills and movement concepts: A child moves their body and interacts with the environment, demonstrating increasing awareness of their physical effort, body awareness, spatial awareness, and directional awareness.
- Gross locomotor movement skills: A child shows increasing proficiency in fundamental locomotor skills such as maintaining their posture, walking with coordination, running, and jumping.
- Gross motor manipulative skills: A child shows increasing proficiency in gross motor manipulative skills such as kicking, grasping objects, and throwing and catching a ball
- Fine motor manipulative skills: A child demonstrates increasing precision, strength, coordination, and efficiency when using their hand muscles for play and functional tasks.
- Safety: A child shows awareness of safety and increasingly demonstrates knowledge of safety skills when participating in daily activities.
- Personal care routines: Hygiene: A child increasingly responds to and initiates personal care routines that support hygiene.
- Personal care routines: Feeding: A child responds to feeding and feeds themself with increasing proficiency.
- Personal care routines: Dressing: A child develops and refines the ability to participate in, and take responsibility for, dressing themself.
- Active physical play: A child engages in physical activities with increasing endurance and intensity.
- Nutrition: A child demonstrates increasing knowledge about nutrition and healthy food choices.
History-Social Science (HSS)
The HSS domain of the DRDP evaluates a child's understanding of their environment, time, ecology, and their ability to act responsibly within a group.
The measures that a child should master in the HSS domain are:
- Sense of time: A child increasingly communicates or demonstrates awareness about past and future events and relates them to present activity.
- Sense of place: A child demonstrates an increasing awareness of the characteristics of physical environments and connections among their attributes, including the people and activities in them.
- Ecology: A child develops an awareness of, and concern for, the natural world and human influences on it.
- Conflict negotiation: A child shows an increasing understanding of the needs of other children and is increasingly able to consider alternatives and negotiate constructively in conflict situations.
- Responsible conduct as a group member: A child develops skills as a responsible group member in an early education setting, acting in a fair and socially acceptable manner and regulating behavior according to group expectations.
Visual and Performing Arts (VPA)
The VPA domain of the DRDP tracks young children's awareness, expression, and engagement across visual art, music, drama, and dance.
The measures that a child should master in the VPA domain are:
- Visual art: A child develops skills and expresses themself with increasing creativity, complexity, and depth through two-dimensional and three-dimensional visual art.
- Music: A child expresses themself by creating musical sounds with increasing intentionality and complexity.
- Drama: A child increases engagement, skill development, and creative expression in drama.
- Dance: A child develops a capacity to respond, express, and create through movement in dance.
What are the developmental levels of the DRDP?
Each measure of the DRDP features specific progressive levels that children must master. These levels help educators pinpoint exactly where a child currently stands in their development.
- Responding (earlier, later): A child demonstrates behaviors that develop from basic responses to differentiated responses.
- Exploring (earlier, middle, later): A child demonstrates behaviors that include active exploration, purposeful movement, purposeful exploration and manipulation of objects, purposeful communication, and the beginnings of cooperation with adults and peers.
- Building (earlier, middle, later): A child demonstrates a growing understanding of how people and objects relate to one another, how to investigate ideas, and how things work.
- Integrating (earlier): A child demonstrates the ability to connect and combine strategies to express complex thoughts and feelings and solve multi-step problems that involve social-emotional, self-regulatory, cognitive, linguistic, and physical skills.
The number of levels in a measure varies depending on the competencies of the measure. For instance, the “ATL-REG 3: Imitation” measure has five levels ranging from early responding to early building, while the “ATL-REG 5: Self-Control of Feelings and Behavior” measure has eight levels ranging from early responding to early integrating.
How do you write DRDP observation examples?
Writing effective DRDP observation notes requires detailing the child's behavior, the context, and the specific time and date. The DRDP Resources YouTube channel provides examples of notes that educators can take based on their DRDP observations. The DRDP instructs educators to include the date, child's name, time, and context of the observation in their notes.
This DRDP observation documents a child's progress in the social and emotional development, language and literacy development, and physical development—health domains. The observation provides the date, the time of day, the child's name, abbreviations of the observed measures, and a detailed record of the skills that the child displays.
Frequently asked questions about the DRDP
Q: Who is responsible for administering the DRDP assessment?
A: Early childhood educators and childcare program providers administer the DRDP. They conduct observations during everyday routines to accurately assess each child's natural behavior and skills.
Q: Can families access their child's DRDP results?
A: Yes, childcare programs frequently share DRDP results with families. These results help guide discussions during conferences and encourage families to support their child's developmental goals at home.
Q: Is the DRDP assessment tool required for all childcare programs?
A: While the DRDP is required for agency-funded programs in California, many other states and private childcare programs voluntarily adopt it as a best practice because it aligns so well with national early learning standards.
Bottom line
Using the DRDP to observe and assess the children in your program can help you ensure they are making significant progress toward the physical, cognitive, social, and emotional milestones they need to meet to succeed as they get older.
If your children are struggling to meet milestones, create a curriculum of lessons and activities that reinforce the necessary DRDP measures and domains so you can help them meet their developmental milestones and prepare for kindergarten.
