Universal+Screening

Universal Screening:

Here is a start....

Universal Screening is the process in which all students are assessed using a quick, low cost, repeatable assessment which focuses on age/grade-appropriate knowledge or skills. It is used to identify students who are not making adequate progress and/or at-risk of failure.

Purpose: [] To determine the effectiveness of curriculum, instruction, and school organization, and to determine students’ level of proficiency in essential academic areas, schools administer screenings to all students, usually three times a year. Screening data are organized in a format that allows for the inspection of both group performance and individual student performance on specific skills.

The information derived from universal screening provides two useful pieces of information. First, it shows how functional the core curriculum and instruction are in the school. In a multi-tiered model of school support, about 80% of all students in the school should be showing adequate progress using a particular curricular element or program. If more than 20% of the students are not making acceptable gains in an area, the school must improve the core curriculum and/or the manner in which the curriculum is delivered to the students. Secondly, universal screening identifies those students who are not making acceptable progress in the core curriculum. Provided that 80% or more are making adequate progress in the foundational curriculum, those who are not require additional intervention, either in small groups or on an individual basis.


 * Reading Universal Screen Needs ([])**

Kindergarten
The most successful screening measures in kindergarten have used various combinations of Letter Naming Fluency, Letter Sound Identification, blending onset-rimes, phoneme segmentation, and sound repetition (Foorman et al., 1998; O’Connor & Jenkins, 1999).

1st Grade
The most successful screening measures for 1st grade students have used various combinations of Word Identification Fluency, Letter Naming Fluency, Letter Sound Identification, phoneme segmentation, sound repetition, vocabulary, and word identification fluency (Compton et al., 2007; Foorman et al., 1998; O’Connor & Jenkins, 1999).

2nd Grade and Beyond
There are surprisingly few studies of screening accuracy beyond Grade 2. In many states, annual results of district- or statewide achievement and standards tests can be used to identify at-risk students. These should result in reasonably good predictions, given that spring–spring and fall–spring achievement correlations are typically strong. Schools should consider a combination of oral reading fluency and more comprehension-oriented assessments, like the Scholastic Reading Inventory (n.d.) and the 4Sight Benchmark Assessments (Slavin & Madden, 2006) that are designed for within-year periodic progress monitoring/rescreening.


 * Math Universal Screening** ([])

To identify who needs intervention, educators need sensitive screening tools. The screening task should be a task that is closely aligned with expectations for learning in the classroom at that point in the instructional program. Published performance standards available in every state are an excellent basis for selecting a screening task. The screening task is used to make both relative (how one student’s performance compares to another’s in the same class or grade) and absolute judgments (how one student’s or all students’ performance compares to expectations for performance at that time in the year). Both judgments are necessary to correctly define a problem and determine what type of intervention or interventions are needed. Some screening models make only one judgment (relative or absolute), and this causes decision errors.

Curriculum-based measurement (CBM) probes of basic (e.g., sums to 12, subtraction 0–20, fact families) and advanced computation skills (e.g., finding least common denominator, multidigit multiplication with regrouping, converting numbers to percentages, solving equations) are empirically supported for screening (VanDerHeyden, Witt, & Naquin, 2003; VanDerHeyden & Witt, 2005). These measures have been found to yield reliable scores over time that correlate moderately with other more comprehensive measures of mathematics performance. Research indicates that the use of computation-only assessment and intervention has demonstrated value for early identification of children who are likely to struggle with advanced problem solving in mathematics. Because these probes can be administered to an entire class at one time and require only two minutes of the student's time, they are currently the measures of choice for screening in mathematics. To identify the screening task, the RTI consultant should print out the state standards for mathematics, review the computation-oriented objectives in sequence, and consult with teachers at a grade-level meeting to determine where students are in the instructional program (i.e., what students are expected to know how to do at that time of year to benefit from continued mathematics instruction). CBM probes can be purchased from a variety of sources (e.g.,Sopris West Educational Services) or built for free using online tools (e.g., Intervention Central) or using inexpensive software (such as those on the Schoolhouse Technologies Web site).