Posted on September 21, 2021 by childrenslearninginstitute
Timeline: 2011-2019
Principal Investigator:
Jason Anthony, Ph.D.
Co-Investigators:
Mike Assel, Ph.D., The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth)
Jeffery Williams, Ph.D.
Tricia Zucker, Ph.D., The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth)
Matt Foster, Ph.D., The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth)
Funding Agency:
Institute of Education Sciences (IES)
Description of Project:
The School Readiness Curriculum Based Measurement System (SR-CBM) is intended to help address the pressing need for assessment tools that teachers can use to efficiently identify children’s strengths and weaknesses in English and Spanish, monitor students’ learning, and inform instruction. This project will include development of research-based progress monitoring tools for both English-speaking children and Spanish-speaking children aged 3 to 6 years. SR-CBM assess vocabulary, names of letters, sounds associated with letters and letter combinations, phonological awareness, mathematics, and science. Many children, especially those from ethnic and language minority groups, lag behind in development of these critical school readiness skills, which places them at risk for academic failure.
The SR-CBM project will be conducted in four phases:
- Researchers generate assessment items in both English and Spanish
- Conduct a pilot study to examine the feasibility of testing procedures
- Scale and evaluate test items
- Examine the SR-CBM’s reliability and validity
SR-CBM will include brief parallel English tests and brief parallel Spanish tests of each school readiness domain. These short forms will be designed for educators to use for universal screening, benchmark testing, and progress monitoring. Expanded English and Spanish versions will be designed for those with advanced assessment training, e.g., evaluators, diagnosticians, psychologists, and researchers, who engage in program evaluation, diagnosis, and educational research. Co-norming of Spanish and English tests will allow comparisons of bilingual children’s competencies across languages. Because SR-CBM was aligned with state learning standards and shares items pools with the Texas Kindergarten Entry Assessment, children’s progress can be gauged relative to meaningful benchmarks.
Participants:
A socioeconomically and geographically diverse sample of 4,000 English-speaking and 2,000 Spanish-speaking children ages 3 to 5 years.
Site:
Initial development work and validation of SR-CBM will take place in Houston, Texas. Scaling and norming studies will take place all across Texas.
