Research Overview

CreativeCurriculum.net is an online curriculum-based system that integrates ongoing assessment of children's development with reporting, program planning, and parent communication tools. It is linked with The Creative Curriculum^® for Preschool, a comprehensive early childhood educational system that has been shown to promote the cognitive, language, social/emotional, and physical development of young children. The assessment system is based on a valid and reliable instrument, The Creative Curriculum Developmental Continuum for Ages 3-5. The instrument meets all of the assessment standards of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and the National Association of State Early Childhood Specialists in State Departments of Education (NASECS/SDE) and has adequate assessment properties. It is an excellent tool for program planning and for analyzing and documenting child progress. It also meets federal and state reporting requirements, such as those of Head Start and the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP). As of July 2006, CreativeCurriculum.net also includes children from 2 to 36 months. For these younger children, the system is based on The Creative Curriculum Developmental Continuum for Infants, Toddlers & Twos, which is linked to The Creative Curriculum for Infants, Toddlers & Twos.

The Reliability and Validity of The Creative Curriculum^® Developmental Continuum for Ages 3-5

In order for an assessment instrument to properly document children's developmental progress and accurately report child outcomes, it must be both reliable and valid. Reliability is a measure of the extent to which different assessors of the same child reach the same conclusions about the child when using the instrument. Validity is a measure of the extent to which the assessment items actually measure what they are intended to measure. Dr. Richard Lambert, of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, conducted reliability and validity tests of the Developmental Continuum for Ages 3-5 on a sample of over 1,500 low-income children. He concluded that the Developmental Continuum has adequate assessment properties. Click here to review Dr. Lambert's technical report.     

The Reliability and Validity of The Creative Curriculum^® Developmental Continuum for Infants, Toddlers & Twos

The Creative Curriculum Developmental Continuum for Infants, Toddlers & Twos underwent an extensive content-validation process, with more than forty experts reviewing the scope and content of the objectives, steps, and examples. A field test was conducted to determine the reliability and validity by using a sample of hundreds of children from across the country, including dual language learners and children with disabilities. The field test is almost complete. A report on the psychometric properties of this assessment tool, also written by Dr. Lambert, will be available in September 2007.

Independent Studies of The Creative Curriculum^® for Preschool and The Creative Curriculum^® for Preschool Developmental Continuum for Ages 3-5

The Creative Curriculum is based on the latest research on how children learn best and has been shown through experimental and quasi-experimental studies to improve classroom quality and promote the school readiness of preschool children. Four rigorous independent studies have been conducted on the effectiveness of The Creative Curriculum for Preschool. Each found positive effects that range from improved classroom quality to stronger academic and social skills. Two of the studies that found positive effects were part of the Preschool Curriculum Evaluation Research (PCER) grants sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. View the evidence on the effectiveness of The Creative Curriculum.

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