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Abstract

Early intervention programs for at-risk and handicapped infants often do not have adequate evaluation systems for collecting the necessary information for making sound decisions about child progress and program impact. To address this problem a description of a comprehensive three-level evaluation plan for measuring child progress and program impact is discussed. Level 3 evaluation is focused on determining general program impact through measuremnt of enrolled children's progress toward developmental milestones. Level 2 evaluates quarterly child progress through the administration of a program-relevant, criterionreferenced tool. The information generated from this program-relevant tool also provides the necessary information for the development of Individual Education Plan. Level 1 evaluation is desgned to determine weekly child progress toward specific instructional objectives by administering brief probe tests. Two years of data collected on at-risk and handicapped infants participating in an early intervention program are presented to illustrate the practical application of this evaluation plan.

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Application of a Three-Level Evaluation Plan for Monitoring Child Progress and Program Effects

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