1. Academy 2: Using Data to Assess Student Progress and Inform Educational Decisions in Culturally Responsive RTI Models
Academy 2: Culturally Responsive Intervention in RTI
This academy investigates culturally responsive intervention within RTI models. Participants learn to design interventions for students, but also for their own pedagogy that take into account the role of culture. Participants also learn to adapt their current intervention approaches by considering both preventative and early intervening strategies to meet the needs of all students within the context of their current situation. Finally, participants engage in an activity that has them consider what is already there in their own schools and classrooms that support the move towards culturally responsive intervention in RtI models.
Copyright 2004 NIUSI

2. Introductions Facilitators and Sponsors
Introduce the academy facilitators (your position and background, and co-facilitators, if any) and the school or district that is sponsoring the academy.
Introduction
Copyright 2004 NIUSI

3. Introductions National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems NCCRESt www.nccrest.org
The National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems (NCCRESt) is funded by the Office of Special Education Programs at the U.S. Department of Education. The mission of NCCRESt is to close the achievement gap between students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and their peers, and to reduce inappropriate referrals to special education. As a result of the work of NCCRESt, we expect to see an increase in the use of prevention and early intervention strategies, a decrease in inappropriate referrals to special education, and an increase in the number of schools using effective literacy and behavioral interventions for students who are culturally and linguistically diverse. As part of our work, we link existing general education reform networks with special education networks. We also synthesize existing research into products that are made accessible in both print and electronic versions. These publications support the efforts of professionals, families, researchers, advocacy organizations and others involved in
the work to create culturally responsive, inclusive school communities.
Copyright 2004 NIUSI

4. What’s in an Educational System?
People
Policies
Practices
What’s in an Educational System?
Before you can act systemically, you need to know what aspects of a system you need to involve. NCCRESt has developed a conceptual framework for understanding culturally responsive educational systems that identifies three key elements that comprise an educational system: the people, the practices, and the policies.
People are key since educational systems are created to educate people, infants, children, adolescents, and adults. Educational systems employ people. Teachers and other school practitioners work together to create effective learning communities for the students they serve. School leaders and other administrators help to keep the system flowing so that students enter; progress and graduate, and teachers and other personnel are recruited, hired, coached, evaluated and retired in a constantly flowing process.
Policies help to guide the people side of the work. They are created to maintain the learning process and reduce the amount of effort expended on activities other than learning, like getting supplies to the classroom, deciding which students are assigned to which teachers, and making sure that there are enough books, desks, classrooms and buildings to house all the students. Policies help parents and students know what to expect, what is expected from them and how the school calendar will flow from the time that school opens until the end of the school year.
Practices are what people do. They include simple things like how students are greeted at the beginning of the year to how reading is taught in the classroom to how assessment occurs. While policies regulate the spheres in which people operate, much of daily practice is up to the people who do the work: students and school practitioners alike. Practices also include how teachers interact with one another, their supervisors, and the building leadership. The practices of administrators at central administration affect the lives of school personnel and the choices they make to involve themselves in decision-making.
When we talk about making a system culturally responsive, we mean that people, policies, and practices need to be assessed in terms of the degree to which they permit or impede culturally responsive action.
Facilitator Note: Allow 10 minutes for this lesson on educational systems
Copyright 2004 NIUSI

5. What are Culturally Responsive Educational Systems?
Culture
Equity
People
Policies
Practices
What are Culturally Responsive Educational Systems?
Culturally responsive educational systems are grounded in the belief that we live in a society where specific groups of people are afforded privileges that are not accessible to other groups. By privileging some over others, a class structure is created in which the advantaged have more access to high quality education and later, more job opportunities in high status careers. This leads to socio-economic stratification and the development of majority/minority polarity. We can turn the tide on this institutionalized situation by building systems that are responsive to cultural difference and seek to include rather than exclude difference.
Students who come from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds can excel in academic endeavors if their culture, language, heritage, and experiences are valued and used to facilitate their learning and development. These systems are concerned with instilling caring ethics in the professionals that serve diverse students, support the use of curricula with ethnic and cultural diversity content, encourage the use of communication strategies that build on students’ cultures, and nurture the creation of school cultures that are concerned with deliberate and participatory discourse practices. Moreover, culturally responsive educational systems create spaces for teacher reflection, inquiry, and mutual support around issues of cultural differences.
Copyright 2004 NIUSI

6. This slide is intentionally left blank for you, the facilitator, to fill in the specific purpose, mission, visions, or frameworks of your organization for your audience.
Copyright 2004 NIUSI

7. Leadership Academies www.nccrest.org
Leadership Academies: NCCRESt helps educators develop leadership skills for culturally responsive practice through leadership academies.
The academies are designed to be used by local researchers and professional developers who are invested in collaborating with schools. The goal of this collaboration is to build more culturally responsive schools that successfully educate students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The approach includes careful consideration of the content for professional development, adult learning principles, and selection of teams from schools and districts that can support their colleagues’ learning and practice. In this way, professional development can build on converged needs, create a sense of common purpose and extend the creativity and skill of practitioners. NCCRESt specifically works with school districts and state education agencies to build information systems that help leadership teams focus on goals for instructional, curricular, and cultural improvement. NCCRESt also works toward empowering action research agendas among school professionals.
Copyright 2004 NIUSI

8. Roles www.nccrest.org Roles
Explain the roles the facilitators will play. Have participants introduce themselves and briefly tell what they’d like to learn or take away with them at the end of the Academy, focusing on what would be useful to them in their practice.
Copyright 2004 NIUSI

9. Outcomes Following this Academy, participants will:
Identify traditional attitudes related to what counts as evidence in research and practice and expand upon these views.
Explore how culture mediates and impacts learning, instruction, and intervention in and outside of RTI models.
Apply these understandings to the design of culturally responsive interventions within RTI models.
Academy Outcomes:
As a result of the activities and information shared at this Leadership Academy, module participants will:
Identify traditional attitudes related to what counts as evidence in research and practice and expand upon these views.
Explore how culture mediates and impacts learning, instruction, and intervention in and outside of RTI models.
Apply these understandings to the design of culturally responsive interventions within RTI models.
Copyright 2004 NIUSI

10. Agenda 15 min Introductions, Greetings, & Warm-Up
40 min Activity 1: RTI Assessment 101
20 min Lecturette 1: Culturally Responsive Progress Monitoring: Collecting and Using Data to Assess Student Progress and Inform Educational Decisions
40 min Activity 2: Developing a Rubric as a Universal Screening Tool
10 min Break
15 min Lecturette 2: Using Data to Inform Movement to the Secondary Interventions Tier
20 min Activity 3: Linking Progress Monitoring to the Design of Culturally Responsive Secondary Interventions
30 min Leave-taking and Feedback
Agenda
Go over the agenda with participants
Copyright 2004 NIUSI

11. Activity 1: RTI Assessment 101
Participants will identify and discuss the ways that they assess student learning on an everyday basis, both as students are learning concepts and skills, and as they demonstrate mastery. Participants will learn the definition of progress monitoring, and types of progress monitoring: mastery measurement, curriculum-based measurement, and performance based assessment, and apply what they’ve learned to sorting examples of assessments into categories. Activity Takes 40 Minutes

12. Lecturette 1 Collecting and Using Data to Assess Student Progress and Inform Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Educational Decisions
Lecturette 1: Collecting and Using Data to Assess Student Progress and Inform Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Educational Decisions

13. Agenda Ensuring Progress Monitoring is Culturally Responsive
Holistic Monitoring of Student Progress
Progress Monitoring in the Classroom
Performance Assessment
Curriculum Based Measurement
Ensuring Progress Monitoring is Culturally Responsive
In this lecturette, we will present an expanded view of assessment in RTI frameworks, including what is typically called progress monitoring. We will present a holistic model of progress monitoring in culturally responsive RTI frameworks, and introduce the concept of scaling up classroom progress monitoring into school wide universal screening. 13

14. A Comprehensive Approach to Monitoring Student Progress
Quantitative
How many and how much?
Methods of gathering data
on student achievement
and rate of progress
Interpretation of collected data
Decisions about instruction
grounded in interpretations
of data
There are a myriad of ways to assess student progress, but in RTI frameworks, assessment is considered in systematic ways to determine which students are making progress through the curriculum with the universal high quality instruction that is provided to all students, and which students would benefit from more intensive instruction at higher tiers in the framework.
More specifically, even once we have ensured that students have in fact received culturally responsive, appropriate, quality instruction within Tier 1, (Klingner, 2006), there may be some students who are not demonstrating the level and forms of progress that students and teachers are satisfied with. In culturally responsive RTI, our expectations for the rate and quality of student progress are based on ongoing assessment of student learning, and in light of fine-tuning our instructional decisions. We establish qualitative (or observational) and quantitative (numerical) methods of gathering data on student achievement and rate of progress, as well as qualitative and quantitative ways of interpreting data. Data collection methods, interpretation, and decisions about what to do in light of data interpretation are all informed by the context of our schools, classrooms, students, and educators.
Qualitative
What does it look like?

15. Beyond Culturally Responsive Instruction and Universal Interventions: Assessment of Student Learning in Culturally Responsive RTI Frameworks
Assess Student
Learning & Behavior
Tune Instructional
Decisions
Provide High Quality
Learning
Opportunities
Student
Just as student learning is enhanced and accelerated within Culturally Responsive RTI frameworks by ensuring that culturally responsive instruction and universal interventions are provided, student learning within Culturally Responsive RTI is more effectively assessed by using approaches that are also culturally responsive. Within each tier, culturally responsive assessment plays a crucial role in informing instruction and monitoring student learning over time.

16. A Form of Assessment: Progress Monitoring
Progress monitoring is the holistic assessment of students’ learning over time with tools that engage students in meaningful, authentic tasks that allow them to demonstrate their knowledge and inform culturally responsive instruction and interventions in RTI.
Assess Student
Learning & Behavior
Tune Instructional
Decisions
Provide High Quality
Learning
Opportunities
Student
Monitoring student learning to inform culturally responsive instructional practices is part of the “ensuring opportunities to learn” cycle that occurs in every tier of culturally responsive RTI. Monitoring student progress involves students as active participants in assessing their own progress, informs instruction, and also helps teachers identify students who may require further support. Progress monitoring is the term used in culturally responsive RTI frameworks to refer to the holistic assessment of students’ learning over time with tools that engage students in meaningful, authentic tasks that allow them to demonstrate their knowledge.

17. Students as Active Participants in Progress Monitoring: An Example
Read each statement about how your group is getting along and learning together and rate yourselves. Add three more statements that your group decided was important to evaluate about how you are interacting and learning with each other.
Every member:
Always
Almost Always
Sometimes
Not really
Not observed
Performed their assigned role
Understood what we were supposed to do
Were able to participate
Listened to each other
Gave respectful feedback to other group members
Expressed our ideas
Compromised when we needed to
Kept focused on learning
This is an example of a progress monitoring tool that helps students actively participate in assessing their own social interactions in the classroom.

18. Overview of Progress Monitoring
Classroom
Formative
Summative
School-wide
Progress monitoring should be done both in the classroom, and school-wide. Progress monitoring should be varied in method and form, and should provide both quantitative and descriptive information about student progress, through both formative and summative methods.

19. Overview of School-wide Progress Monitoring
School Plan :
Instruments and observations
How often and in what areas
Interpreting and utilizing data
A school-wide plan for progress monitoring should include:
The instruments which will be utilized and the observational data which will be collected as part of the school-wide progress monitoring approach.
How often all students’ progress will be monitored and in what subject areas. (Often, schools consider student data a minimum of three times/year.)
A plan for interpreting and utilizing progress monitoring data in order to:
evaluate and revise classroom instruction,
determine individual student remediation needs,
evaluate and revise implementation school improvement plans,
evaluate and revise teacher professional learning plans,
evaluate and revise the district assistance and intervention plan,
assess teacher performance.
Facilitator Note: Ask participants for to call out the types of progress monitoring that their schools are using, or those with which they are familiar.

20. Overview of Progress Monitoring
Classroom
Formative
Summative
School-wide
Progress monitoring, whether school-wide or in the classroom, is not an afterthought- done periodically throughout the year, as with summative assessments only. Progress monitoring is also integrated in daily activities, as with formative assessments. Progress monitoring starts in the classroom with culturally responsive teachers who assess student’s learning and the responsiveness of their teaching to students. As a first step, teachers use data collection throughout the day. The goal is to make sure all of the students are “getting it,” and if not, address this through changes in instructional practices that meet students’ individual and group needs, and build on their strengths.
Things to think about that should shape educator instructional decisions include: Are the students understanding the curriculum? If so, what are they understanding? What can they do? If not, who isn’t understanding it? Are there patterns across learner needs or characteristics that could better inform the instruction? For example, if the majority of students who are not getting it are leaving the classroom for separate English as a Second Language instruction, are there ways to restructure teaching so that the ESL teacher and general education teacher work together on lessons and co-teach throughout the day?
In the remainder of this lecturette, we are going to focus on what progress monitoring looks like in the classroom.

21. Progress Monitoring In Culturally Responsive RTI Frameworks Helps Educators…
Determine whether students are benefitting from an instructional program
Identify students not demonstrating adequate progress, and consider student data disaggregated by language, gender, race, & ethnicity
Build culturally responsive instruction/ interventions for students not benefitting from current practices
Compare
efficacy of different forms of instruction & design more effective, individualized instructional programs
Determine expectations (outcomes) for the quality & rate of student progress that consider language and other relevant student factors
There are many benefits to the use of systematic progress monitoring in the classroom. Progress monitoring assists educators in determining expected outcomes for the quality and rate of student progress that are informed by students’ language, proficiency, and other relevant student factors, such as time as a student in that particular school. Progress monitoring also helps teachers determined whether and which students are benefitting from curriculum and instruction provided, and to consider patterns of different performance or progress across gender, race, ethnicity, or language. This information assists teachers in determining the need for building culturally responsive instruction and interventions for students not benefitting from current practices, while making increasingly more individualized plans for instruction and intervention for certain students who demonstrate the need for more intensive supports.

22. Desired outcomes for students come first!
Progress Monitoring in the Classroom: Designing & Selecting Appropriate Progress Monitoring Tools
Desired outcomes for students come first!
Multiple pathways for producing the
desired product or performance
Students’ diverse backgrounds,
experiences, skills and abilities
In order to create or select appropriate progress monitoring tools, we must know where to start. We begin with what we want students to know and be able to do—or, in other words, we begin with learning outcomes—because we can’t effectively assess student learning unless we ourselves are clear about what we want students to know and be able to do. Moreover, students themselves won’t know what we expect them to learn unless we make those learning outcomes clear and explicit to the students themselves.
An exemplar of an outcome that meets the criteria outlined on this slide is Every student will
create an essay. A non-exemplar is Every student will be able to write in cursive.
Before this lecturette, you thought about the ways that educators already assess student learning in classrooms. Many forms of assessments are designed, chosen, and implemented everyday- questioning students, conferencing with students, and administering written tests, among others.
A note of caution: If the student's cultural and linguistic experiences are not taken into account when progress monitoring tools are developed and interpreted, the evaluation process of how well a student has learned within the school's culture will be flawed. Struggling performance may indicate the degree of disconnection between the tool itself and the student‘s cultural and linguistic frames of reference, rather than the degree of mastery of the knowledge and skills being monitored (Koelsch, Estrin, and Farr, 1995).

23. How often when, where, by whom?
Progress Monitoring in the Classroom: Utilizing & Interpreting Progress Monitoring Tools
How often when, where, by whom?
What is the process for data interpretation?
Another action required in progress monitoring is in the actual utilization and interpretation of the designed or
selected assessment tools. Some key decisions to be made to guide this action are how often, when, where,
and by whom will assessments be utilized? Also, what will be the process for interpreting the data gleaned from
the progress monitoring tools?
This slide shows an example of a teacher who, besides whole class methods of progress monitoring, through
assessments and observations of all students’ learning, has identified three students who require more focused
progress monitoring because of some challenges in certain areas. This teacher has planned specific ways of
monitoring these students’ learning.
Just as students should be provided with assessment types that are familiar to them and which they already use in everyday classroom interactions, that the person utilizing the assessments with the student should be someone with whom the student interacts with regularly. Student progress should be measured and interpreted by the person who is responsible for administering the curriculum: the teacher. Educators must figure out how often they need to gather progress monitoring data on all students in order to be fully responsive to student learning and preferences. This will vary dependent on many factors, including class size, primary language of students, and teacher experience.

24. Progress Monitoring in the Classroom: Performance Assessment
Formative
Summative
Performance assessments are authentic tasks such as activities, exercises, or problems that require students to demonstrate their learning by applying their knowledge and higher level thinking skills (e.g. inductive reasoning, cause and effect) to a particular situation.
Qualitative
What does it look like?

25. Progress Monitoring in the Classroom: Performance Assessment
For example, students might be given a current political map of Africa showing the names and locations of countries and a similar map from 1945 and be asked to identify and explain differences and similarities. Then, the task might be to prepare a newspaper article explaining the political and social reasons for the changes. Performance tasks often have more than one acceptable solution; they may call for a student to create a response to a problem and then explain or defend it. The process involves the use of higher-order thinking skills (e.g., cause and effect analysis, deductive or inductive reasoning, experimentation, and problem solving).
Adapted from The Language of Learning: A Guide to Education Terms, by J. L. McBrien & R. S. Brandt, pp. 77-78, 1997, Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Africa
2008

26. Progress Monitoring in the Classroom: Performance Assessment
BASIC
PROFICIENT
ADVANCED
Criterion 1: Idea of change synthesized
Ideas support knowledge of changes in country names and locations.
Ideas are evident of knowledge that changes in name and location occurred.
In addition to knowledge of change in name and location of borders, offers interpretation of this change.
Then, the teacher might use a qualitative rubric for assessing the quality of students’ ability to create this newspaper article that conveys understanding of political and social changes in Africa that resulted in changes in country names and locations. Rubrics, generic scoring tools used to evaluate a performance in a given outcome area, consist of a fixed measurement scale (e.g., 4 point) and a list of criteria that describe the characteristics of products or performances for each score point. Rubrics make the connection between outcomes and assessments more detailed and explicit. In addition, rubrics give students a clearer idea of what the achievement target is that they are expected to hit, and they also serve to guide evaluators in rating performances and giving feedback to students. We will take a look at a qualitative rubric in the activity that follows this lecturette.

27. Progress Monitoring in the Classroom: Performance Assessment
Performance assessment is considered to more accurately measure higher order thinking skills of all students and provides a more fair assessment of students of color (Simmons & Resnick, 1993) and those from economically disadvantaged background (Wiggins, 1989). Further, they require students to display a more comprehensive array of knowledge and skills than do traditional tests, and facilitate teachers’ opportunities to see students’ problem solving in life-context (Boodoo, 1993; Wiggins, 1989). They also are linked tightly with instruction and allow scoring that goes beyond qualitative scoring of “right” or “wrong” answers (Garcia & Pearson, 1994).

28. Progress Monitoring in the Classroom: Curriculum Based Measurement
Quantitative
How many and how much?
Performance
Assessment
Progress Monitoring
Classroom
Formative
Summative
Curriculum Based
Measurement
Another type of progress monitoring is Curriculum Based Measurement, often referred to as CBM. Even though the phrases PROGRESS MONITORING and Curriculum Based Measurement are often USED SYNONYMOUSLY, they are not synonymous terms…CBM is a formative type of Progress Monitoring. Mastery Measurement, another type of Progress Monitoring, is summative. Facilitator’s Note: Re-check for understanding of formative and summative assessments.
CBM is an assessment procedure that helps, along with other forms of Progress Monitoring, determine students’ initial and ongoing competence in a specific academic content area (e.g., math or writing). CBM results are in the form of quantitative scores that represent overall competence in the specific content area. CBMs, which are also called probes, are tests that sample the year-long curriculum, which are administered to students at systematic intervals throughout the school year (e.g., twice per quarter). Each time another CBM is administered, it is an alternative form of the previous test; it is of parallel difficulty, and measures the same year-long curriculum.

29. Example of a CBM in Math: Concepts and Applications
Steps to CBM:
Create or select appropriate probes
Administer and score probes
Graph scores
Look for patterns of student performance across student factors
Set goals
Make curricular and instructional decisions
Provide feedback to students and families
This is an example of a CBM in the concepts and applications of time, adding, counting objects, numbers, and money. A teacher would administer this same CBM to all students in her or his classroom at the start of the school year. Then, at regular intervals throughout the school year (e.g. once a week) the teacher would administer another probe that measured the same exact skills, but with different prompts/questions. Each CBM administered throughout the year should measure all skills taught in the curriculum for that year.
For more information on how to design, administer, interpret and apply data from CBMs, check out the Iris Center’s Module on Classroom Assessment at
Example of a CBM in Math: Concepts and Applications

30. Ensuring Progress Monitoring is Culturally Responsive
Incorporate performance assessments
Developing items/performance tasks
Rating performance
Piloting the Assessments
Develop, select, and interpret tools and performance both quantitatively and qualitatively;
Ensure measures are truly aligned with what student have actually been taught, not just what curriculum is being utilized, or what the grade level standards are;
Link instructional decisions and changes to performance patterns across student factors (e.g., primary language proficiency, English proficiency) that may be linked to struggling performance, ensuring that students’ opportunities to learn are being met, and that curriculum and instruction is culturally responsive.
Utilize tools that assess skills in the language in which they have been taught- (e.g., it is not enough to assess phonemic awareness in Spanish if a student’s primary language in Spanish, but she has never been taught Spanish phonemes).
So, how do we make sure that our approach to Progress Monitoring within Culturally Responsive RTI frameworks, are also culturally responsive?
There are challenges to making sure that performance assessments are culturally responsive (adapted from Hood, 1998):
First, develop performance tasks and scoring criteria that (a) are responsive to cultural differences and (b) adequately assess the content related skills that are the focus of the assessment. So, the teachers defining the performance criteria must have understanding of the kinds of tasks that are culturally responsive for different or multiple groups, as well as the specific content area being assessed.
Even if test developers recognize the importance of utilizing raters who are representative of targeted examinees' cultural group and of making representativeness a priority for selection as a performance rater, the potential influences of prejudicial beliefs on ratings of student performance cannot be eliminated. Appropriate steps must therefore be taken to minimize these effects, but once again, what if those who rate examinees' performances on specific tasks both reflected the cultural diversity of the examinees and possessed content expertise in the domain under study? One would expect these raters to have more insight in observing and rating examinees from their particular cultural group. It is also possible that they might have more favorable views of the performance of students from their own cultural group that cannot be attributed to "insider" sensitivity and insight. Such issues can and must be addressed during the training sessions for these observers. (Hood, 1998)
Next, pilot the tasks to make sure they truly are culturally responsive, conduct analyses to determine the degree of congruence of the assessment tasks with the targeted learning outcomes as well as the identification of patterns of performance that may emerge within groups. During this carefully considered process, the final selection of the performance tasks, criteria, and procedures, along with the protocols for observing and rating performance, are determined.

31. Agenda Holistic Monitoring of Student Progress
Progress Monitoring in the Classroom
Performance Assessment
Curriculum Based Measurement
Ensuring Progress Monitoring is Culturally Responsive
In this lecturette, we discussed the monitoring of student progress in the classroom using both quantitative and qualitative methods, introduced the tools of performance assessments and curriculum based measurements, and discussed ways to ensure that progress monitoring is being implemented in culturally responsive ways. Next, we will go into depth about scaling up progress monitoring into the development and implementation of school wide Universal Screening. 31

32. Activity 2: Developing a Rubric as a Universal Screening Tool
In this activity, participants will begin the process of creating a rubric to assess student learning and then applying the rubric to student work.
 Activity Takes 30 Minutes

33. Lecturette 2 Scaling Up to Universal Screening: Context and Cultural Considerations
Copyright 2004 NIUSI

34. Agenda
Moving from Classroom Progress Monitoring to School-wide Universal Screening
School Processes for Developing, Selecting, Interpreting, and Applying Universal Screenings
In this lecturette, we will talk about school processes for monitoring student progress within Culturally Responsive RTI frameworks, which is called universal screening. We will place particular emphasis on contextual considerations that should be in place in designing or selecting universal screening instruments, and in interpreting and applying universal screening data.
Copyright 2004 NIUSI

35. Progress Monitoring to Universal Screening Cultures in the Classroom
Quantitative
How many and how much?
Curriculum Based
Measurement
Progress Monitoring
Classroom
School-wide
Formative
Summative
Cultures in the Classroom
What students &
teachers bring
with them
Universal screening is a school-wide quantitative and formative type of progress monitoring (most often CBM) used in Tier 1 of RTI frameworks. The data collected with universal screening tools are used to determine if curriculum and instruction is effective, and for whom. While universal screening data also provides information about which students’ may require additional supports, upon further analysis of they are in fact receiving high-quality, responsive curriculum and instruction, it is also used to inform students’ movement to more intensive tiers of support. Universal screening processes utilize and interpret the same progress monitoring tools with all students, in order to determine expected performance levels within the context of schools and classrooms.
CBMs, as (formative) progress monitoring tools, are scaled up into Universal Screening tools when the same CBM probes are given to all students across a given group of students (i.e. grade level) on regular intervals. CBMs are then scored, results interpreted, and educational decisions are made about which students require more support, and how curriculum and instruction needs to be adjusted.
In Culturally Responsive RTI frameworks, there are conditions in school that allow for the use, interpretation, and application of CBMs that take into account the unique contexts of schools. These contexts can be thought of as a space where three areas of culture overlap: the cultures people bring into schools, such as their beliefs about purpose of schooling, the cultures that are already there in schools, such as the systems set up to assess student learning , and the cultures created through the work educators, families, and learners do together.
Facilitator Note: Ask participants to think of examples of summative forms of Universal Screening. These include year-end assessments, both Standardized “high-stakes” assessments, such as statewide assessment systems, and nationally standardized assessments.
What’s already
there
The work people
do together
The Classroom Culture
School Cultures

36. Universal Screening in RTI Frameworks
Collecting
The Role of Schools in Identifying
Data Sources in their own Contexts
Disaggregating
Planning for Improved Instruction
Universal screening challenges schools to collect the information that can provide robust pictures of what is currently happening. This however, requires systematic approaches to accumulating and compiling information from students, families and school professionals. Because each school is a unique context where the cultures people bring, the culture of what is already there, and the culture created is the work people do together overlap, it is schools themselves who need to identify the data sources that will help them become more culturally responsive and create systems that will ensure that data get collected in cycles. By collecting the same information in several cycles, the building leadership team, grade level teams and other interested groups can monitor change over time, as well as inform how students move from Tier to Tier within culturally responsive RTI models. The composition of teams should be of individuals with different areas of expertise with regard to diverse student populations: educators, parents, professionals with knowledgeable about English acquisition, school psychologists, and other subject area specialists.
Disaggregating data is another challenge. A more complete picture gets told when data are sorted into groups that provide a way of comparing the same information across different populations. For example, the second grade team might want to know by ethnicity, which groups of readers are most and least proficient at comprehension. Breaking data out by subgroup helps the school and departments or teams understand where they are being successful and where and for whom they may need to improve their practices. This is especially relevant to RTI, as it not only important to know which individual students are struggling, but to identify patterns, including whether or not certain subgroups, such as students learning English, are not responding to a certain literacy instructional approaches.
A third area that challenges schools is selecting measures of student performance that are done often enough for teachers to be able to adjust their instructional planning and practice to teach specific groups of students more effectively. Grades at the end of a quarter are summative. They tell teachers how well groups of students did in performing against the teacher’s standard for that particular subject for that particular grading period. Since the grade comes as the end of the grading period, the teacher will not go back later and re-teach a concept or coach students through a particular algorithm. What teachers need is information in a quarter about how well students are grasping a particular concept and which students are grasping the concepts. Thinking about assessment in different and in ongoing ways helps teachers plan ahead to re-teach to some students, offer more practice, and then accelerate other students who may need more time to develop new skills. This is formative evaluation: the teacher is using information to guide changes in instruction strengthening instruction in Tier 1, as well as determine when students may require more intensive and different forms of support in Tier 2. These types of assessment also help problem solving teams make important decisions about interventions and support within Tier 3.
Using Data to Inform Student
Movement Across Tiers
Copyright 2004 NIUSI

37. Cautions & Tensions with Universal Screening: Determining Norms for Performance
CBMs, when used as universal screening tools, are used to contrast individual student performance to that of a group of students. This brings up the decision about using pre-determined grade level norms (often provided by CBM publishers) vs. local norms. Results on any universal screening tools should never be interpreted as scores only. Low scores on these tools should indicate the need for deeper analysis of patterns across student factors, grade levels, preparation of teachers, professional learning opportunities, and other context-specific factors that could be affecting student performance (e.g., who is administering the CBM).
To foreground equity and culture in Culturally Responsive RTI frameworks is to consider the context of the unique school student population when determining what learning outcomes are expected. Some CBMs obtained from national publishers, provide pre-determined norms (or expected scores) on CBM probes, as cut-offs for determining which students are struggling, and which students are performing as expected. These norms may be considered as guidelines, but local norms for student performance on CBMS should also be determined, and just as with the forms of progress monitoring conducted in the classroom, decisions about who is getting it and who is not, curriculum, and instruction, must carefully consider the local school context, including its teachers and students.
Copyright 2004 NIUSI

38. What to do with Universal Screening Data: Implications for Curriculum, Instruction, & Student-Specific Interventions
Culture
Equity
While Tier 2 and Tier 3 are represented as separate tiers or support levels within culturally responsive RTI models, the delineation between Tier 1 and 2 is really meant to demonstrate that when the early intervening and universal interventions tier is done well, fewer students will struggle, thus requiring additional supports. It’s not that the interventions provided at the second tier are qualitatively different than those provided in Tier 1, it’s just that they require more systematic support to sustain over time. The same is true of the difference between Tier 2 and Tier 3.
Let’s say that a school has developed a universal screening for reading comprehension that is administered to all fourth grade students. Results, when disaggregated based on area identified as relevant by school staff, indicate that students are eligble for and reviece free and reduced lunch are struggling in this area. First tier interventions, would include additional professional learning for all teachers on literacy enrichment and family-school partnerships, classroom walk-throughs by educator teams to assess the multi-modal presentation of curriculum and concepts, as well as the richness of the physical environment with key vocabulary, and arrangement of furniture and classroom participation to encourage student conversation.
Copyright 2004 NIUSI

39. What to do with Universal Screening Data: Implications for Curriculum, Instruction, & Student-Specific Interventions
Culture
Equity
At the same time, there may be students whose results on the universal screening are within the very bottom quartile within the first population of students and who are in their second year of learning English, and who are in classrooms with a highly-skilled, culturally responsive teacher whose practices are robust for students learning English. For these students, in addition to the first tier interventions that all students receive, second tier interventions might include the following:
Several educators may need ongoing support in learning about how second language acquisition impacts learning and how to universally design literacy instruction and materials so that curriculum isn’t watered down for students learning English. Tier 2 would include the development of an ongoing professional learning support plan for fourth grade teachers that addresses when and how often professional learning will take place, restructuring scheduling so that sixth grade teachers (whose students in their first and second years of learning English are demonstrating that reading comprehension is an area of strength) have shared planning time with fourth grade teachers, and so that each fourth grade teacher is able to spend time co-teaching with a sixth grade teacher. At the same time, the fourth grade students who demonstrated difficulty with reading comprehension will be supported through this support for teachers. These students will also be provided with more time in cooperative groupings of students in the classroom with lots of opportunities to talk in both English and the student’s primary language about literacy materials and projects. (We will talk more about student-specific interventions in the first lecturette of Academy 3).
Copyright 2004 NIUSI

40. What to do with Universal Screening Data: Implications for Curriculum, Instruction, & Student-Specific Interventions
Culture
Equity
After eight weeks, and with weekly progress monitoring being done by classroom teachers, three of the fourth grade students who are learning English, whose teachers’ professional learning is being supported, and who have been participating in language-rich cooperative groupings and receiving additional student-specific interventions, have not made expected progress towards predetermined learning outcomes. At this point, these three students begin to receive tertiary intervention supports, which include the general education, special education, and English Language Acquisition teacher meeting once a week after students go home to review these students’ work, plan lessons and additional interventions to address their struggles, plan lesson and put together additional resources for families. Also, each students’ family is invited to meet with these teachers once a month to provide input, question existing strategies, and offer suggestions for improvement. Additionally, the special education teacher and the English Language Acquisition teacher will spend thirty minutes a day in the general education classrooms of these students’ providing them with direct support while also instructionally collaborating with the general educational teacher. As this is quite an extensive process, and will require teachers’ and families’ additional time and ongoing commitment this may be considered special education, and prior to these three students receiving this level of intensity of support, each students’ family and team of educators has met and reviewed student information and gathered any additional information through additional forms of assessment. The last lecturette of this module will present this collaborative assessment process in depth.
Copyright 2004 NIUSI

41. Progress Monitoring in classroom Universal Screening of all Students
Putting it all Together: Holistic Progress Monitoring in RTI Frameworks
Progress Monitoring
Progress Monitoring in classroom
Universal Screening of all Students
Procedures for quantitative AND qualitative analysis of educators’ and students’ needs based on Universal Screening results.
In this academy, we have talked at length about the purpose of progress monitoring at both the classroom and school-wide levels: that is to inform curriculum and instruction, what is working, what is not, and for whom. Progress monitoring also helps educators determine which students may require additional support, in light of having received high-quality, culturally responsive curriculum. When both qualitative and quantitative forms of progress monitoring have been utilized and interpreted, the appropriateness and responsiveness of instruction has been assessed and adjusted, some students may require some more intensive supports, which we provided some brief examples in the previous three slides. Our final academy will focus on developing and implementing student supports in culturally responsive ways within RTI frameworks.

42. Copyright 2004 NIUSI www.inclusiveschools.org
Agenda
Moving from Classroom Progress Monitoring to School-wide Universal Screening
School Processes for Developing, Selecting, Interpreting, and Applying Universal Screenings
In this lecturette, we introduced school processes for conducting universal screenings, with particular emphasis on considerations that should be in place in designing or selecting, interpreting, and applying universal screening data.
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43. Activity 3: Linking Progress Monitoring to the Design of Culturally Responsive Secondary Interventions
Participants are provided with the Delaware Student Testing Program Instructional Guide to Writing, asked to apply the rubric to a sample of student work, and develop culturally responsive student-specific interventions.
Activity takes 40 minutes

44. Thank you for your participation!
Leave Taking
Thank you for your participation!
Copyright 2004 NIUSI