School Readiness Curriculum Based Measurement System (SRCBM)
The School Readiness Curriculum Based Measurement System (SRCBM) 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. SRCBM 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 SRCBM 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 SRCBM’s reliability and validity
SRCBM 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 SRCBM 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.
CLI Faculty:
Tricia Zucker, Ph.D., Michael Assel, Ph.D.Principal Investigator:
Jason Anthony, Ph.D.Co-Investigator:
Tricia Zucker, Ph.D., Michael Assel, Ph.D., Jeffrey Williams, Ph.D., Matt Foster, Ph.D., The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston)Participating Sites:
Initial development work and validation of SR-CBM will take place in Houston, Texas. Scaling and norming studies will take place all across Texas.