Abstract 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. This session will discuss current Part C state eligibility definitions related to LBW and prematurity and their alignment with DEC recommendations.
Kathryn Morrison
SRI Author
Study Poster: Exploring Inclusion Through Administrative Data: Challenges & Opportunities
SRI has partnered with the California Department of Education in a study funded through a CCPRP grant to identify strategies for increasing facilitators and decreasing barriers to the inclusion of preschoolers with disabilities in subsidized child care.
Combining strategic instruction model routines with technology to improve academic outcomes for students with disabilities
All students, including those with disabilities, are faced with a challenging standards environment. Through funding from the U.S. Department of Education’s Investing in Innovation fund, researchers and teachers worked together using a Design Based Implementation Research approach to create tools to help students face these challenging standards, particularly to support attainment of higher order thinking skills. This team integrated research-based Strategic Instruction Model’s Content Enhancement Routines with technology to create Enhanced Units (EUs). The technology developed to deliver the EUs is CORGI: Co-Organize Your Learning. Two randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of the EUs and the CORGI technology were conducted. In this presentation, the researchers will discuss the EUs, CORGI, the findings from the RCTs, and ongoing research and development activities.
Taking a critical look at your child find efforts
In reviewing the data on the percentage of children birth to 3 years old that my state’s Part C program serves, I noticed that we serve a much lower percentage of children as compared with the national average. I want to understand why my state’s percentage is so much lower and identify some ways to improve our system. How can I examine our data and child find efforts? — Jane Coordinator
Background
Child find is a component of Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) that requires states to establish a comprehensive system to identify, evaluate, and enroll infants and toddlers who are eligible for early intervention. The comprehensiveness of the child find system affects the number of children Part C programs serve. In fall 2017, the percentage of infants and toddlers, birth to 3, served by Part C ranged across states from 0.8% to 9.5%, with a national average of 3.3%. The state percentages are expected to vary somewhat because of differences in each state’s eligibility criteria. However, big differences in the percentage of the population served between states with similar eligibility criteria would suggest that some states might not be serving all eligible children. This blog post provides guidance on where to begin to examine child find data and practices and describes several resources that are available.
Where to Start
Limited staff and resources pose challenges for many states, including how to improve the child find system. Program improvement can be a daunting process, and it can be difficult to know where to begin. However, taking a close look at your policies, procedures, practices, and data are first steps toward making your child find efforts more effective.
Start by reviewing the federal regulations that guide child find and consider how your state is meeting them.
Examine state and local program data related to child find to better understand your system. This includes reviewing public awareness efforts, referral procedures, and whether your state or local area uses a screening tool as a first step. Looking at difference across local programs in the percentage of the population served and the number and demographics of children (e.g., age, geographic location, gender) in each step of the child find process, from referral to enrollment, are also useful for identifying patterns.
Resources and Help Are Available
The Office of Special Education (OSEP) and the Technical Assistance centers are here to help! In addition to providing TA, they have developed tools that can assist you in evaluating and improving your child find system.
Child Find Self-Assessment : A four-part toolkit that can help states examine how they are meeting child find regulations, identify critical child find best practices, locate resources to help them implement best practices, and easily access OSEP’s policy letters and guidance on child find.
Part C Child Find Funnel Chart Tool : This Excel template displays data on each step of the Part C process, from referral through exit, for a set of infants and toddlers referred within a specified time span. Data can be entered for the entire state, a local program, or one or more subgroups. The tool enables Part C program administrators to easily visualize the differences in the number of children in each step of the process.
Meaningful Differences in Child Find Calculator : This Excel-based calculator allows states to make several comparisons related to the percentage of infants and toddlers served: state percentage compared with state target, local program percentage compared with state target, and year-to-year comparisons of the state percentages. It also computes confidence intervals to determine whether the difference between two numbers is large enough to be considered meaningful (statistically significant).
When Jane Coordinator looked at the state data, she noticed that not many referrals were coming from one region of the state. The Part C Child Find Funnel Chart Tool helped her determine that the point of difference from other regions was at referral. The Meaningful Differences Calculator determined that the difference was statistically significant. The Child Find Self-Assessment helped Jane identify several best practices the state could implement to address the low number of referrals from the region.
For more information on how to use any of the tools listed above or to receive other support related to child find, contact Margaret Gillis (margaret.gillis@sri.com) or Evelyn Shaw (evelyn.shaw@unc.edu).
Creating Writing Items of Graduated Complexity for Students with Significant Cognitive Disabilities
SRI authors: Kathryn Morrison Abstract This paper presents: (1) a design methodology for improving the validity of inferences about the performance of students with significant cognitive disabilities on large-scale ELA writing assessments; (2) an overview of the ECD and UDL frameworks used to guide the item writing effort; (3) an overview of the graduated complexity […]
Alternate Assessment Design-English Language Arts/Reading: Assessment Task Library
SRI Authors: Kathryn Morrison, Christopher Sanford Abstract 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. Funded by an Enhanced Assessment Grant to the Idaho State Department of Education, the project brought together SRI International and a consortium of states including Idaho, […]
Alternate Assessment Design – Mathematics. Technical Report 4: Design Patterns. The Background and Role of Design Patterns in the Evidence-centered Design Process
SRI Authors: Kathryn Morrison Abstract Evidence-Centered Design (ECD) is a view of assessment as evidentiary argument: it is an argument from what we observe students say, do, or make in a few circumstances to inferences about what they say, do or make more generally (Mislevy, Steinberg & Almond, 2003). ECD can serve as a cornerstone […]
Synergistic Use of Evidence-Centered Design and Universal Design for Learning for Improved Assessment Design
SRI author: Kathryn Morrison Abstract The integration and application of evidence-centered design (ECD) and universal design for learning (UDL) in assessment design increases the likelihood that items and tasks will be well aligned with content standards and targeted constructs and accessible to student with diverse abilities.
