How to Fill Out and Submit the Child Outcomes Summary (COS) Form

To fill out the Child Outcomes Summary form, a team that includes practitioners and family members gathers evidence about how a child functions in everyday life, compares each observed skill to what’s typical for the child’s chronological age, walks through a structured Decision Tree, and assigns a rating from 1 to 7 for each of three outcome areas. The completed form is then submitted through whatever data system your state’s Part C early intervention or Part B Section 619 preschool program requires. What follows walks through each step in the order a team actually works through it.

Where To Get the Form

The ECTA Center hosts the nationally recognized version of the COS form at ectacenter.org as either a Microsoft Word document or a fillable PDF.¹ Many states have adapted this template into their own electronic data systems, so your state Department of Education or early intervention lead agency may require a state-specific version entered through a secure portal. Check with your program administrator before using the generic ECTA form for an official submission. Every version captures the same core information: child identifiers, team members, evidence of functioning, and a numerical rating for each of the three outcomes.

The Three Outcome Areas You’ll Rate

Every COS rating covers the same three functional outcome areas. These describe how a child operates in daily life at home, in childcare, and in the community, not academic subjects.

Positive social-emotional skills: how the child relates to adults and other children, including building relationships, expressing emotions, and following social expectations for their age.²
Acquiring and using knowledge and skills: thinking, reasoning, problem-solving, memory, communication, and early literacy.²
Taking action to meet needs: emerging self-sufficiency in tasks like eating, dressing, moving around, and using tools such as a fork or crayon.²

Each outcome gets its own rating, and the three ratings are independent. A child might score a 5 on social-emotional skills and a 3 on taking action to meet needs.

Gathering Evidence Before the Team Meeting

The COS form is not itself an assessment tool. It summarizes what assessment tools and observations have already revealed.¹ Recommended practice pulls information from several sources rather than relying on a single test score.³ Typical sources include:

Standardized assessments, such as the Battelle Developmental Inventory or the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, which compare the child’s performance to a national sample.
Observations in natural settings — everyday routines at home, daycare, or in the community — which show how the child uses skills rather than just whether they can perform them on demand.
Parent and caregiver input. Family members see the child across the widest range of situations and often surface abilities or challenges that don’t appear during a short therapy session.
Clinical reports from occupational, physical, and speech-language therapists that detail specific functional skills and the contexts where the child shows them.

The rating discussion itself goes faster and produces a more accurate result when everyone arrives with documented observations already sorted by outcome area.

Age Anchoring Every Piece of Evidence

Age anchoring compares each observed skill or behavior to what’s expected for a child of that chronological age.⁴ Before the team can assign a rating, each piece of evidence has to be categorized into one of three levels:

Age-expected (AE): skills and behaviors in the broad range of what’s typical for the child’s chronological age.
Immediate foundational (IF): skills that appear just before age-expected functioning in the developmental sequence. The child is close but not there yet.
Foundational (F): skills that are two or more steps below age expectations, building blocks that appear much earlier in development.⁴

Getting this right requires developmental progression resources, not just milestone checklists, which can be misleading because milestones at different ages don’t always track the same underlying skill. The ECTA Center specifically warns against using basal ages from assessment tools as a shortcut, because basal ages represent the point where nearly all children demonstrate a skill and can make a child look more age-expected than they actually are.⁴ Anchor information as it’s gathered rather than waiting until the rating meeting.

Walking the Decision Tree To Pick a Rating

The COS 7-point rating scale runs from 1 (only foundational skills, functioning like a much younger child) to 7 (age-expected functioning with no concerns). Teams walk through a structured Decision Tree, a series of yes/no questions that channels the discussion toward the right rating.⁵

The tree opens with one question: does the child ever function in ways that would be considered age-expected for this outcome? If yes, the team is somewhere in ratings 4 through 7. If no, the team is somewhere in ratings 1 through 3. From there, the branching narrows the choice:

Rating 7: age-expected functioning across all or almost all everyday situations, with no team concerns.
Rating 6: generally age-expected functioning, but with significant concerns.
Rating 5: a mix of skills, with more age-expected than not.
Rating 4: occasional age-expected skills, with more functioning that is not age-expected.
Rating 3: immediate foundational skills used most or all of the time, no age-expected functioning yet, functioning resembles that of a younger child.
Rating 2: occasional use of immediate foundational skills, with more functioning at the foundational level.
Rating 1: only foundational skills, with no immediate foundational or age-expected functioning; abilities resemble those of a much younger child.⁵

When disagreements come up, going back to the branching questions usually resolves them faster than open debate.

Filling In the Form Fields

The COS form captures both administrative information and the substance of the team’s rating discussion. Start at the top of the form:¹

Child identifier: the unique numerical ID assigned by your program or state system.
Child’s name and birthdate: full name as it appears on the IFSP or IEP, and date of birth in MM/DD/YYYY format.
Date of ratings: the date the team met and agreed on the ratings.
Timing of ratings: Entry (initial), Interim (if your state uses mid-program ratings, such as at a six-month or annual IFSP/IEP review), or Exit.¹
Team members: every person who contributed information, with name, role or discipline, and whether they participated in the rating discussion. Family members are listed by their relationship to the child.
Information sources: check all types of information used and name every assessment or screening tool.

For each of the three outcome areas, document the child’s functioning starting with any age-expected skills and working down through immediate foundational and foundational skills. Write in concrete, observable terms. “Uses two-word phrases to request items during meals” is useful; “has some language” is not. If overall functioning is age-expected but the team has concerns, a separate field captures those concerns.

After the documentation, select a rating from 1 to 7 for each outcome area. This is where the Decision Tree discussion becomes a single number on the form.

The Exit Progress Question

When a child leaves the program, the form adds a yes/no question for each outcome area: has the child shown any new skills or behaviors related to this outcome since the entry rating? The bar for “yes” is low. If the child developed even one new functional skill between entry and exit, the answer is yes.⁶ If yes, briefly describe the evidence of progress. This question feeds federal reporting categories directly and should not be left blank.

Who Sits on the Team

The COS process is built around a team discussion, not a solo decision by one clinician. The team includes practitioners who deliver services and family members who know the child across settings.³ There are no rigid credentialing requirements. What matters is that the people in the room know the child well, and the composition should change as a child’s routines and providers change. Providers should review the COS Process Online Module before their first rating discussion to understand the Decision Tree, rating definitions, and what age anchoring requires.⁷ Families participate as full partners in the discussion rather than as passive information sources.

Submitting the Completed Form

Submission method depends entirely on your state’s data system. Most states use electronic portals where practitioners enter ratings and supporting evidence directly. Some states still accept paper submissions mailed to district offices. Your program coordinator or state Part C or Part B 619 coordinator can confirm the required method and any submission deadlines; these vary by state and are not set at the federal level.

At minimum, every child in the program needs an entry rating and an exit rating. Some states also require interim ratings at set intervals. Once submitted, individual ratings are aggregated into the state’s Annual Performance Report, which goes to the Office of Special Education Programs.⁸

Why Accurate Ratings Matter

Individual COS ratings don’t stay on the form. States convert entry and exit rating pairs into five progress categories reported to OSEP.⁹ For Part B preschool programs these fall under Indicator 7; for Part C early intervention, under Indicator 3.¹⁰ If a team inflates an entry rating, the child’s progress will look smaller at exit. If a team deflates an entry rating, it artificially inflates the program’s reported effectiveness. Either distortion undermines the data that states and the federal government use to evaluate early childhood programs, which is why state agencies flag incomplete or inconsistent ratings for follow-up.

1
ECTA Center. COS Form and Documenting Evidence
2
ECTA Center. Child Outcomes Step-by-Step – Section: Promoting Positive Outcomes
3
ECTA Center. Child Outcomes Summary (COS) Process
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ECTA Center. Gathering and Age Anchoring Information About Child Functioning
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ECTA Center. COS Rating Scale: COS Definitions and Decision Tree
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ECTA Center. COS Quick Reference Guide
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ECTA Center. COS Rating Discussions
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DaSy Center. Converting Child Outcomes Data to OSEP Progress Categories/Summary Statements
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ECTA Center. Child Outcomes Summary Process: Calculators and Ratings Conversion
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Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Part B SPP/APR Indicator 7