Teacher Rating Form

Teacher Rating Form

Children’s development of social skills and positive behaviors is an important objective for early childhood education programs and is associated with success in school. A Teacher’s Child Report (TCR) form has been developed to allow kindergarten teachers to rate children’s social skills and classroom conduct and also provide information about any health or developmental concerns. The teacher ratings of children’s behavior, along with information from the parent interview, will supplement the direct assessments to allow for fairer and more robust appraisals of children’s skills and competence. While teacher and parent ratings are not as objective as direct assessments, teachers and parents provide critical information because they see children over extended periods of time and in a variety of settings.

The TCR, originally developed for the Head Start FACES, uses two scales to measure social skills and behavior problems in preschool and kindergarten. The Cooperative Classroom Behavior scale includes 12 items adapted from the Personal Maturity Scale (Alexander and Entwisle, 1988) and the Social Skills Rating System (Elliott, Gresham, Freeman, and McCloskey, 1988). These items ask teachers to report the frequency of positive behaviors, including cooperation with adults, friendly play, and sharing with other children. The Behavior Problems scale consists of 14 items adapted from the Personal Maturity Scale, Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach, Edelbrock and Howell, 1987), and the Behavior Problems Index (Zill, 1990). Problem behaviors include disruptive or overly aggressive behavior, hyperactivity, excessive shyness, and social withdrawal. The two scales were combined into a single social competency scale to measure social emotional outcomes for CLIO preschool children. The internal reliability statistic (Cronbach’s alpha) for the combined scale was 0.92 in the spring 2004 CLIO data collection. These scales are proprietary. The same TCR will be used for kindergartners and first-graders in the CLIO Follow Up Study.

Estimated burden hours per year: 68