DIEEC supports continuous quality improvement (CQI) for programs using approved curriculum and assessment. Your technical assistant (TA) uses a consultative and coaching approach to collaborate with you – the administrator/family child care educator – to strengthen current practices and enhance the curriculum and assessment to align with your program’s learning environment vision. Through a wide array of resources, the program will build an action plan to dig deep into the next steps of using curriculum and assessment. This action plan will serve as a road map that will increase the understanding of children’s development and the quality of their experiences.

Teaching Strategies Gold Information

Comprehensive Curriculum Information

What is comprehensive curriculum and why is it important?

The comprehensive curriculum is a written plan that guides the design of children’s goals for learning and development; the experiences children will have to achieve those goals, and how adults, both staff and families, will support children’s learning to achieve school success. A sound, comprehensive curriculum is more than a resource guide that contains ideas and activities to do with children in your classrooms or homes. It is evidence-based or relies on what research tells us about how children grow and learn and has many different parts or elements. These elements work together to provide a framework that helps ensure children have fun and challenging experiences that are developmentally, linguistically, and culturally appropriate. This is otherwise known as developmentally appropriate practice (DAP).

The Curriculum Consumer Report can support programs in selecting an appropriate curriculum. The report provides review summaries and ratings of comprehensive infant and toddler, preschool, and family childcare curricula. These are merely suggestions. Currently, the Office of Early Learning is not maintaining a list of approved curricula.

What is supplemental curriculum?

Supplemental curriculum is designed to support children’s learning in a more specific area, such as literacy or mathematics. It is a valuable resource that offers additional ideas to help children learn in a specific domain of the Early Learning Foundations (ELFs).

This is not meant as exhaustive list; programs may utilize other curricula with evidence of implementation.

Child Assessment Information

What is child assessment and why do we assess young children?

Assessment is designed to document children’s growth and learning through observation. It informs planning and instruction that support the development of an individual child and is an ongoing, systematic process that should be embedded as part of the daily curriculum. Assessment opportunities should occur naturally throughout the child’s day, creating authentic experiences to note their progress and development.

We assess young children to:

  • monitor development and learning;
  • guide planning and decision making;
  • report and communicate with others (families, state/federal agencies, etc.); and
  • identify who might benefit from special services.**

**This is screening. (For more information on screening, please see Developmental Screening)

Developmental Screening

What is development screening and why is it important?


Screening is a brief procedure which indicates a child’s health and developmental status at a single point in time. The primary goal of screening is to document normal aspects of a child’s health and development, while identifying potential problems that need further assessment and follow-up (Luehr & Hoxie, 1995).  

Early childhood programs should screen each child to:

  • detect developmental needs very early;
  • have basis for referral to early intervention or the school system; and 
  • discuss development and learning with families.

Ages and Stages Questionnaire

The following materials will help you with using the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ) to screen your children and share with families.

  • A step-by-step quick start guide for new child care providers and their ASQ points of contact.
    • Includes training steps, how to access your accounts, helpful tips to set up your process, and troubleshooting guidance. 
    • Color version available here.

  • The ASQ technical assistance manual guides you through the process to successfully implement developmental screening in your program and provides materials to share with families for them to complete the screeners.
    • This resource is most helpful after you have an account and are ready to start sharing access portal links with families.