Social-emotional skills are among the most critical building blocks for young children. From the very beginning, infants and toddlers rely on these skills to form healthy relationships with caregivers, practice self-regulation, and express their needs. With proper support, they can build on these early social-emotional skills to set the stage for lifelong learning, healthy relationships, and overall well-being.
However, many teachers are noticing a steep decline in this area, according to a recent Education Week survey on the State of Teaching. More young children struggle to follow directions, wait their turn, and interact positively with their peers compared to previous years, signaling a growing gap in key social-emotional development.
So, how can we nurture these essential skills from the start? The Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA) was designed with that very purpose in mind. The DECA offers a standardized approach for assessing key social-emotional skills—such as initiative, self-regulation, and attachment—and provides strategies to strengthen these competencies in children from birth to age five.
What is the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA)?
The Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA) is a nationally standardized, strength-based assessment tool that promotes resilience and social-emotional development in children ages 4 weeks to five years, as well as the adults who care for them. It identifies and builds upon children’s strengths first rather than focusing solely on problem behaviors.
The Devereux Center for Resilient Children developed these assessments based on decades of resilience research, and thousands of programs worldwide have used them for over 25 years. Why focus on resilience? Resilience is essential for helping young children navigate the challenges of growing up. It helps them bounce back from setbacks, learn from experiences, and keep moving forward—even in the tough moments.
The DECA assesses three key protective factors, or the social-emotional strengths that help children cope with challenges, build resilience, and thrive in school and life:
- Initiative: The ability to use independent thought and action to meet their needs.
- Self-regulation: The ability to express emotions and manage behaviors in healthy ways.
- Attachment: The ability to promote and maintain positive connections with other children and adults.
DECA arms educators and families with a clear roadmap to nurture resilient, confident, and capable learners.
Who completes the DECA—and how does it work?
Raising a resilient child requires a team effort. That's why DECA encourages teachers, caregivers, and other key adults in a child's life to complete the assessment.
Evaluators should spend a minimum of four weeks observing the child to feel confident answering all of the questions on the assessment. For teachers in particular, it gives them sufficient time to get to know the child and identify their social-emotional strengths across everyday moments and routines—such as sharing with others, seeking help, and initiating play. This approach also makes it easier to identify patterns in a child’s behaviors instead of relying on isolated scenarios.
Completing the assessment is quick and easy, taking only 5–10 minutes on paper or 3–5 minutes with the web-based version, eDECA. With eDECA, evaluators can enter their ratings directly into the online platform. If families don’t have access to the platform, a teacher or administrator can send them a secure link to a simplified version of the rating form assigned to their child—without access to scoring tools or other children’s data. Once complete, eDECA automatically saves and scores the evaluator’s responses and generates a variety of reports, including the following:
- Single Rating Report: Detailed summary of an individual child’s assessment, showing scores across each scale and highlighting key strengths and potential areas of need
- Strategy Report: Targeted, research-based strategies tailored to the child's identified needs and strengths for use at both school and home
- Rater Comparison Report: Comparison between each evaluator’s ratings to provide a comprehensive view of a child's development.
- Group Profile: Visual snapshot of scores for all children in your program, making it easy to analyze their overall social-emotional health
With paper assessments, each evaluator should fill out a rating form capturing the child’s behavior over the past four weeks. When complete, both educators and families should submit their forms to a designated teacher or administrator to score. Assessments can be scored by hand using conversion tables based on the child’s age and rater type or by entering the ratings into the eDECA system for automatic scoring.
The results from each evaluator are compared to gain insight into how a child’s behavior may shift—or remain consistent—across different environments and situations. With this information, educators can plan more effective strategies for strengthening the child’s social-emotional competencies across these settings.
How can early educators use DECA to strengthen social-emotional development?
With DECA, educators can transform results into meaningful action. With insights at both the individual and program levels, DECA equips you with the tools you need to:
- Provide targeted support. Use DECA to identify behaviors that can be leveraged (strengths) or improved (areas of need). Then, apply specific strategies or interventions to support each child’s social-emotional growth.
- Identify concerns early—screen for behavioral concerns such as aggression, withdrawal, or attention problems. With early intervention, educators and families can take action before issues escalate.
- Guide daily instruction. The strategy guides included in the DECA assessment kits serve as practical implementation tools to help inform and shape classroom instruction, behavior support, and staff training.
- Engage families. Equip parents and caregivers with activities, strategies, and resources to promote resilience outside the classroom.
- Communicate with program stakeholders. Share easy-to-read reports with families, board members, grant sponsors, and other stakeholders. Communicating assessment results keeps everyone informed, aligned, and accountable in driving positive outcomes, ensuring that program decisions are transparent, data-driven, and focused on providing meaningful support for each child.
How much does the DECA cost and what's included?
Kaplan offers comprehensive kits for each version of the tool, along with the necessary resources to assess children from birth to age five. Here’s an overview of each kit, including cost, supporting materials, and training resources:
DECA Infant/Toddler (DECA-I/T)
The DECA-I/T Kit includes a comprehensive set of tools to assess the social and emotional development of children from four weeks to 3 years of age. This version focuses on the earliest protective factors, screens for potential risk factors—like adversity or unsafe circumstances—and includes family-friendly resources to continue support in home settings.
The DECA-I/T Kit includes:
- 50 Record Forms (20 Infant and 30 Toddler) for families and educators to rate a child’s social-emotional strengths based on their observations
- Strategies Guide and User Guide for straightforward implementation
- 20 Parent Strategy Guides to support family engagement
- Set of 5 reproducible Parent-Teacher Master record forms (4 infant masters + one toddler master) that can be copied and used repeatedly
- 3 Adult Resilience Journals (Building Your Bounce) for staff health and well-being
- A CD with the technical manual
- Norms tables to interpret a child’s score
- Reproducible planning forms for creating individualized plans that support a child’s social-emotional development based on their strengths and needs
Cost: $229.95
DECA Preschool Program, 2nd Edition (DECA-P2)
The DECA-P2 Preschool Program Kit includes tools to assess children aged 3 through 5, along with strategy guides for both educators and families. This version assesses the full range of protective factors and potential behavioral concerns in preschool-aged children.
The DECA-P2 Kit includes:
- DECA-P2 Record Forms (set of 40) for families and educators to rate a child’s social-emotional strengths based on their observations
- DECA-P2 User’s Guide and Technical Manual for straightforward implementation
- Promoting Resilience in Preschoolers: A Strategy Guide for Early Childhood Professionals, 2nd Edition
- Promoting Resilience For Now and Forever: A Family Guide for Supporting the Social and Emotional Development of Preschool Children, 2nd Edition (set of 20)
- Building Your Bounce: Simple Strategies for a Resilient You (2 copies) to promote resilience in the adults who parent, nurture, and/or work with young children
- Flip It!® Transforming Challenging Behavior to help adults address challenging moments with young children
Cost: $229.95
Additional DECA resources and materials
Kaplan also offers companion products and resources for supporting children’s social-emotional growth:
Digital component: The eDECA is an online, web-based application that completes scoring, generates reports, recommends research-based strategies, and stores assessment data from any Devereux Early Childhood Assessment. You must purchase the annual license for $299.95, and then buy the ratings you need at an additional cost.
You’ll choose one of four purchase options when ordering DECA ratings, based on your program needs:
- By assessment ratings: Pay for the total number of single ratings you plan to complete during the contract year.
- By child ratings: Pay based on the total number of children you plan to assess, with unlimited ratings per child for the contract year.
- Access to DECA Program strategies: Includes research-based strategies designed to strengthen children’s protective factors and support their social-emotional growth.
- Access to Conscious Discipline strategies: Provides strategies aligned with the seven core skills of Conscious Discipline—a trauma-informed, social-emotional learning approach: Composure, Encouragement, Assertiveness, Choices, Empathy, Positive Intent, and Consequences.
| DECA Program (You get access to DECA Program strategies) |
Conscious Discipline (You get access to Conscious Discipline strategies) |
|
| By Assessment Ratings: Also called Single Ratings, you pay for how many total ratings you plan on completing for the year. |
Option #1 $1.00 per rating |
Option #3 $1.50 per rating |
| By Child Ratings: You pay for how many children you plan on rating, and you can complete an unlimited number of ratings on each child for the Contract Year. |
Option #2 $2.95 per child |
Option #4 $4.50 per child |
View our eDECA purchasing guide for step-by-step instructions on placing an order and choosing the option that works best for your program.
Parenting curriculum: Your Journey Together (YJT) is a strength-based curriculum that equips parents with strategies, activities, and resources to promote the resilience and social-emotional well-being of the entire family.
Training and professional development: While DECA is easy to use, Kaplan offers customized training to ensure that staff implement it as intended, thereby enhancing program quality.
Children’s books: This set of books helps promote resilience in the classroom, featuring titles such as Mean Soup by Betsy Everitt and No, David! by David Shannon.
Explore our full collection of Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA) tools for everything you need to assess, strengthen, and support social-emotional development in your early childhood program.
Get started with DECA tools, resources, and support from Kaplan
Early educators play a pivotal role in shaping children's future, equipping them with the skills they need to thrive in school and life. From promoting resilience to advancing social-emotional learning, the DECA provides a reliable, research-backed solution to fill in the gaps for the children you serve.
Ready to discover how DECA can strengthen your program's approach to social-emotional learning while driving positive outcomes? Explore Kaplan’s DECA tools to learn more about available offerings, pricing, and implementation support, or contact a local Kaplan Representative for 1:1 help and support.
