Universal Screening

Cadre 6 TrainingOctober 12, 2010

• Screening systems in place– How can you go more in depth?– How do you develop more breadth?

• Who needs this information?

Universal Screening provides data to make unbiased decisions for ALL students

Universal Screening• Why: – To determine the health of the core

• Make instructional changes to improve core instruction

– To identify students who need additional instructional support

– Are staff using the data?

What• Robust indicator of academic health• Brief and easy to administer• Can be administered frequently• Must have multiple, equivalent forms– (If the metric isn’t the same, the data are

meaningless)• Must be sensitive to growth

A universal screener should over-identify students who might need something more!

Screeners • easyCBM• AIMSweb• DIBELS• Math Computation• Math Applications• Math Tests of Early

Numeracy• Writing (Total Words

Written)• Writing (Correct Word

Sequences)

Not Screeners• Quick Phonics assessment• QRI-IV• CORE Multiple Measures

Assessment• DRA2• Fountas and Pinnell• Report cards• Meeting OAKS standards• Read Well Unit Tests, core

curriculum weekly tests on skills that are learned

What

Universal Screening• Who: ALL students

– Do all staff believe that it should be for ALL?

• When: 3 times a year

– Fall Winter Spring

Universal Screening• How:

• Who will conduct Universal Screening? • Who will train the screeners?• Who will prepare materials?• Who will organize at the school?• Where will the data go?• Who will organize the data and present it to

teaching teams?• How will fidelity of administration be checked?

In your team discuss• How well is your universal screening

being conducted?– Do all students get assessed in a timely

manner?– Are staff trained to administer it?– Is it done with fidelity?

• What changes do you need to make to improve your system?

Universal Screening provides data to make unbiased decisions for ALL students

Have staff bought into the screener concept?

• Barriers– “it’s not all about fluency”– “it’s not a valid assessment”– “it’s all about the numbers”– “it will be used to evaluate my

instruction”– “what about comprehension?”

Oral Reading Fluency• ORF is not designed to provide an

exhaustive assessment. • You can be fluent enough, unless you want

to be an auctioneer!• Strong link to comprehension• Accuracy matters!

Oral reading fluency and comprehension activity

• With the person next to you. Determine when each of your birthdays are.

• The person with the next birthday is the Test Administrator, paper A. The other person will be the Test Taker, paper B.

• Test Administrator, read your directions to yourself. Give the test and score.

• Test Taker, read the passage aloud and be prepared to answer questions.

In your team• Discuss how this activity might be

used to impact staff’s understanding of using ORF as a screening assessment and how you might incorporate using accuracy.

To determine the health of the core

Are staff using the data?• School-wide (100%) grade level meetings– Fall, winter, spring (following screening)

– Critical to have general education teachers as active members of this process.

Outcome: general education teachers know what to teach and how to teach during the core program to improve students’ achievement

Big Idea• Do not just use screening data to

place students into interventions– Otherwise you will always be feeding the

herd individually

To identify students who need additional instructional support

• Are staff using the data?• To place students into appropriate

interventions• How are these decisions made?

– Are they unbiased?

Big Idea• Trust the data!– Otherwise you will not be feeding the

“right” cows