Assessment involves using both formal and informal techniques to monitor a child’s progress in an early education setting. Formal assessments are standardized evaluations used to measure performance against specific criteria, while informal assessments are flexible, observation-based methods used to gather real-time feedback.
Early childhood development is complex. This is a crucial time in children’s lives as they are actively learning and cultivating cognitive, language, physical, and social-emotional skills. It is a time when they are discovering classroom concepts and learning how they apply to the real world. As an educator monitoring growth and development, using a clear assessment tool provides valuable insight into your lessons and helps you determine if children are making progress toward learning outcomes.
A combination of assessment methods helps you evaluate children, strategize educational instruction, and implement new ideas. In this article, we discuss formal vs informal assessment—what they are, how they differ, and how you can successfully use both in your childcare program.
What is formal assessment?
Preschool assessments are an integral part of early childhood education. Formal assessment is a systematic evaluation method used to test a child’s learning against a standard or benchmark. Educators use these preplanned tests to grade performance and measure retained knowledge after completing a lesson, similar to a summative assessment.
The results of formal assessments allow you to learn new information about your preschoolers and identify their strengths and weaknesses. As an efficient tool for comparison, these evaluations give you insight into how children measure up to their peers and to other children across the county, state, and country.
Examples of formal assessments include standardized tests, progress report cards, and portfolios.
What are standardized tests?
Standardized tests are formal assessments that educators administer and score in the exact same way each time. This includes how teachers give instructions, ask questions, and grade the results. Preschoolers typically encounter their first standardized tests when they take kindergarten entry assessments (KEAs).
KEAs do not decide whether children should or shouldn’t enter kindergarten. Instead, they provide a snapshot of what preschool-age children know in comparison to their peers. Educators use KEAs to inform classroom instruction, plan curriculums, and identify which children might require special education services.
Kindergarten Readiness Checklist
Use this free checklist to assess a child’s progress, identify strengths, and promote growth.
How do progress report cards work?
Progress report cards provide families with formal evaluations and updates on their children’s overall progress. They measure performance across the four main developmental areas: physical, language, cognitive, and social-emotional.
Progress report cards create a direct line of communication between educators and families. They help teachers identify learning trends, spot behavior patterns, and recognize developmental delays early. This type of formal assessment also allows teachers to plan and improve their curriculum over time.
Why use structured portfolios?
Portfolios are formal assessment tools that allow you to document a child’s progress over a long period. As you collect various samples of a preschooler's work, you can create structured digital or physical portfolios that highlight their cognitive, language, social-emotional, and physical development.
These collections give you and families direct insight into a child’s experiences, strengths, and weaknesses. Creating structured child portfolios is easy with software like brightwheel. You can save time and maintain consistency across your childcare program with customizable portfolio templates, making it simple to share updates with families and foster strong engagement.
What is informal assessment?
Informal assessment is a flexible, non-standardized evaluation method used to measure a child’s understanding in real time. Unlike formal assessments, informal assessments do not use strict criteria or grading rubrics, allowing educators to observe progress naturally during daily activities.
Educators have the opportunity to be much more creative when conducting informal assessments because of the loose structure and absence of comparisons. Examples of informal assessment include observation, samples of children’s work, and one-to-one conversations.
How does observation work?
Observation involves paying close attention to preschoolers and recording information as they learn, play, and interact with the world around them. It is one of the most common methods of informal assessment.
Observation requires documenting a child’s learning over time, watching their strategies as they problem-solve, and assigning suitable work based on their current abilities. You can adopt several observation methods in your classroom, such as running record observations and anecdotal records.
Why collect samples of children’s work?
Collecting samples of a child’s work provides an informal assessment alternative to a highly structured portfolio. By saving a child's drawings, paintings, or writing samples, you can assess their fine motor skills and provide updates on their creative learning.
These samples provide excellent insight into the cognitive abilities of your children. You should always include a note with each sample so you, other staff, and families understand the exact context in which the child created the work.
How do one-to-one conversations help?
Engaging young children in one-to-one conversation builds their language skills and provides an immediate opportunity to gauge their understanding of classroom concepts.
To fully benefit from these conversations, avoid close-ended questions and replace them with open-ended alternatives. For true insight into their understanding, you can ask open-ended questions like “Why did you do that?”, “What made you think of that?”, or “Why do you think that happened?”
What is the difference between formal and informal assessment?
The main difference between formal vs informal assessment is that formal assessments use standardized grading to compare performance against benchmarks, whereas informal assessments rely on flexible observations to track individual daily progress.
Both methods have a solid place in an early education setting, but they differ significantly in their purpose, grading system, scope, flexibility, and score comparison.
What is the purpose of each assessm
Educators use formal assessments to determine a child’s knowledge based on specific guidelines at the end of a learning experience. They compare a child's knowledge to a set standard among their peers, which is why standardized tests are common in these evaluations.
Conversely, educators use informal assessments to gather immediate feedback on what a child has learned during a lesson. They help track daily progress, identify immediate challenges, and prepare children for future formal assessments.
How do the grading systems compare?
Formal assessments use specific criteria and rubrics to grade a child's performance objectively. Informal assessments do not use standardized grades or rubrics. Instead, educators use a child's past performance as an evaluation tool to measure their current accomplishments.
What is the scope of evaluation?
Formal assessments measure performance on a broad level to assign a grade and identify long-term trends among similar-aged children. Informal assessments provide a narrow, highly individualized view of a specific child. They help educators explore specific skills and create individualized instruction goals based on a child's exact needs.
How much flexibility does each offer?
Formal assessments offer very little flexibility because administrators must stick to a strict testing system. Educators cannot deviate from the assigned questions or the scoring process. Informal assessments allow educators to be completely flexible. Teachers can adjust their informal methods instantly based on the specific needs of the child or the environment.
How do score comparisons work?
Formal assessment scores compare a child’s results to other children in the same age group, whether in their classroom, their state, or across the country. Informal assessments do not compare children to one another. Instead, they compare a child's current performance directly to their own previous work.
How should educators use formal and informal assessments in the classroom?
Educators should use formal assessments at the end of lessons to objectively measure learning, and use informal assessments during daily activities to adjust instruction in real time. Formal assessment is better suited for evaluating a child's overall performance against benchmarks, while informal assessment works best when you need immediate feedback to support a child's daily growth.
Because informal assessments happen in a child’s natural learning environment, they provide an accurate picture of a child's abilities without the pressure of a test. This real-time feedback allows you to immediately address issues, adjust your lessons, and offer extra support. A tool like brightwheel’s lesson plan feature helps you do this by allowing you to create custom lesson plans, log observations, and share progress updates with families from one platform.
Using formal assessments is ideal at the end of lessons because they are completely objective. The standardized administration creates a common ground for measuring the performance of all children. This makes formal assessments perfect for updating families quarterly or at the end of the school year. By sharing portfolios and progress reports, you increase transparency and strengthen the collaborative relationship between your childcare program and the families you serve.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Can informal assessments replace formal assessments?
A: No, informal assessments cannot fully replace formal assessments in an early education setting. While informal methods provide excellent daily feedback and reduce testing anxiety, formal assessments are necessary for benchmarking a child's long-term progress against state or national educational standards.
Q: How often should childcare programs conduct formal assessments?
A: Childcare programs typically conduct formal assessments on a quarterly or biannual basis. This frequency allows educators enough time to collect substantial data and provide families with comprehensive updates on a child's long-term developmental progress.
Q: What are the best tools for tracking informal assessments?
A: The best tools for tracking informal assessments include daily observation logs, anecdotal records, and digital childcare platforms. Using a digital platform like brightwheel allows teachers to log real-time progress, attach work samples, and instantly share daily insights with families.
Conclusion
Assessment in early childhood education is an essential process of gathering information to evaluate knowledge, monitor progress, and guide educational instruction.
While formal assessment helps measure current skills compared to similar-aged children, informal assessment evaluates a child's individual daily progress. Regardless of their differing purposes, combining both formal and informal assessments provides the most effective strategy for supporting child development in your childcare program.
