Senior Education Researcher, SRI Education
Kathryn Morrison, MSPT, has more than 20 years of experience in social science research and has managed numerous projects in the area of disability policy, particularly as it relates to students and young children. She has extensive expertise in technical assistance and in assessment design, development, and testing. She has worked extensively on alternate assessment development using evidence-centered design (ECD) and universal design for learning (UDL).
At SRI, Morrison provides technical assistance to Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) early intervention and early childhood special education state programs in multiple states through the Center for IDEA Early Childhood Data Systems (DaSy). The DaSy Center is helping states enhance their data systems and build their capacity to use data. She has participated in the development of several DaSy tools for Part C programs, including the Child Find Self-Assessment (CFSA) and the CFSA Quick Start Guide. In 2020, Morrison co-chaired DaSy’s biennial national conference: Improving Data, Improving Outcomes. She has also provided technical assistance for multiple Preschool Development Grant Birth Through Five (PDG B-5) projects.
In her assessment work, Morrison was recently principal investigator for a project funded by the National Science Foundation to design and test educational tools for students with disabilities or other learning challenges. For another project, she led teams in designing developmentally appropriate observation-based assessment tasks for kindergarteners. She was also project manager for SRI’s contract with the National Center and State Collaborative project. Funded by a General Supervision Enhancement Grant from the U.S. Department of Education, this project brought together 26 states to build an alternate assessment for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities. Morrison co-led two additional projects funded by Enhanced Assessment Grants: Alternate Assessment Design-Mathematics and Alternate Assessment Design-English Language Arts. For both projects, she worked with small groups of states to improve the technical quality of their alternate assessments for students with significant cognitive disabilities.
Morrison has also contributed to numerous research projects through project management, survey design, onsite data collection, liaison work with schools and early intervention programs, data analysis, and report writing. She is currently coordinator for a project examining facilitators and barriers to the inclusion of children with disabilities in early learning and care. She has previously participated in the National Study on Alternate Assessments (NSAA), a study of the alternate assessments for students with significant cognitive disabilities in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. She was an integral part of the team that designed the Pre-Elementary Education Longitudinal Study (PEELS), which gathered information on the experiences, outcomes, and kindergarten transitions of preschoolers receiving special education services. She was also part of the team involved in the collection, analysis, and dissemination of data from the National Early Intervention Longitudinal Study (NEILS), which examined the experiences and outcomes of more than 3,300 infants and toddlers with or at risk for disabilities.
Morrison holds a BS in biology from Santa Clara University and an MS in physical therapy from Boston University.
Key projects
- The Center for IDEA Early Childhood Data Systems (DaSy)
- Inclusion of Children with Disabilities in Subsidized Child Care
- Corgi-2: Enhancing Middle School STEM Learning
Recent publications
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DEC Position Statement on LBW and Prematurity and State Part C Eligibility
The DEC Position Statement on low birth weight (LBW) and prematurity summarized developmental outcomes of these infants and provided evidence of the positive impact of early intervention and family engagement.
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Study Poster: Exploring Inclusion Through Administrative Data: Challenges & Opportunities
This poster presents key findings from the analyses of administrative data about children ages 3 through 5 years with disabilities in subsidized care in California.
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Combining strategic instruction model routines with technology to improve academic outcomes for students with disabilities
This team integrated research-based Strategic Instruction Model’s Content Enhancement Routines with technology to create Enhanced Units (EUs).
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Taking a critical look at your child find efforts
This blog post provides guidance on where to begin to examine child find data and practices and describes several resources that are available.
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Creating Writing Items of Graduated Complexity for Students with Significant Cognitive Disabilities
This paper presents: a design methodology for improving the validity of inferences about the performance of students with significant cognitive disabilities on large-scale ELA writing assessments…
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Alternate Assessment Design-English Language Arts/Reading: Assessment Task Library
This technical report contains a description of the library of assessment tasks created by the Alternate Assessment Design—English Language Arts/Reading (AAD-ELA) project.
Selected publications
- Creating writing items of graduated complexity for students with significant cognitive disabilities
- Alternate assessment design – English language arts/reading: Assessment task library
- Alternate assessment design – Mathematics: Design patterns, the background and role of design patterns in the evidence-centered design process
- Alternate assessment design – Mathematics: Synergistic use of evidence-centered design and universal design for learning for improved assessment design