Cultural sensitivity of early childhood assessments based on learning progressions: a Rasch person fit analysis

Abstract This study investigated concerns about potential racial/ethnic bias in the Desired Results Developmental Profile (DRDP), a widely used observational assessment in early childhood education (ECE). Specifically, we examined whether the learning progressions (LPs) underlying the DRDP items exhibit differential applicability to children from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) families—comparing groups of children identified as Latino/a, Black, or White. Using Rasch person fit analyses with a large public preschool sample ( N = 80,058), we tested the hypothesis that greater positive misfit for Latino/a and Black children would indicate bias. Contrary to this hypothesis, our findings revealed comparable person fit distributions across the three racial/ethnic groups, suggesting no evidence of racial/ethnic bias in the DRDP. Additionally, the study identified key trends, including higher positive misfit among children in special education, likely reflecting greater intra-individual variability, and slightly lower misfit for children identified as female compared to males. Person fit improved over the course of the academic year, underscoring the potential influence of raters and contexts on consistency. Teacher-level variance emerged as the largest contributor to person fit variance, highlighting the need for ongoing professional development and support to ensure consistency. The results support the cultural sensitivity of the DRDP and emphasize the importance of continued research on rater effects and potential biases in early learning assessment. This study also demonstrates the promise of person fit metrics as a tool to enhance assessment validity, equity, and instructional planning in ECE contexts serving children from diverse families.