To make progress in early child development and to meet the
growing demands for accountability, nations need to:
- Establish a strong monitoring system for assessing children’s de-
velopmental outcomes - Cultivate a culture of evidence-based decisionmaking in social
policy - Develop capacity for assessing the efficacy of national and
community-based programs.
Communities that are already implementing ECD programs could
use a population-based outcome measure to raise awareness of so-
cioeconomic factors influencing child development and to promote
community development. In developing countries, a population-
based measure could be particularly powerful for leveraging ECD pol-
icy and increased investments in ECD programs.
As noted, population-based outcome measures are available and
are being tested and used in a variety of settings. The EDI has had the
most exposure and is the best documented to date. Expanded appli-
cation, study, and discussion of this instrument and others are
needed now to resolve important questions and to advance under-
standing and action in early child development. Being able to evalu-
ate children’s development comprehensively, longitudinally, and
comparatively are achievable goals in the near future.
A few of the next steps on the ECD agenda are—
- Develop a policy framework that incorporates current under-
standing of parenting and child development services and en-
compasses the prenatal–early childhood–primary school time
frame. - Use the ability to measure child outcomes to leverage ECD pol-
icy. Researchers are developing tools and measures to monitor
and evaluate the outcomes and efficacy of large-scale ECD pro-
grams. The question to ask is not whether ECD programs are ef-
fective, but rather, how and under what circumstances proven
Measuring Child Development to Leverage ECD Policy and Investment 285