Screening Measures and Models

By Dr. Evelyn Johnson
Boise State University

This past week, I worked closely with an elementary school to develop a screening process for quickly identifying students who may be at risk for not meeting performance standards in reading, math, and behavioral expectations. A lot of interesting discussions came up regarding the role of assessment, the requirements for developing and implementing an effective screening process, and the need to consider the costs and logistics of implementation against the benefit of improving the accuracy of screening decisions.

So, with this entry I’m going to digress from secondary issues for just a minute to discuss more general issues related to screening in an RTI framework. Screening is one of the essential components of an RTI framework -- kids are screened for academic and behavior issues about three times a year to identify as early as possible those who may need support to meet grade-level performance standards.

Screening presents many challenges for schools. The goal is to identify all or nearly all of the kids at risk while minimizing the number of students who are over-identified. Screening is meant to be a brief assessment that results in a highly accurate identification of an initial risk pool of students. Screening is not meant to be diagnostic or in-depth -- the goal is to quickly determine who may be at-risk and then follow-up with more in-depth procedures to determine the extent and nature of the student’s difficulties.

Some of the challenges of developing a quality screening program include finding measures that are:

• highly predictive of the construct of interest (e.g., reading or math or behavior)
• group administered and efficiently scored
• accurate in sorting at-risk from not-at risk students
• high in face validity -- do teachers understand what is being measured by the screen and does it appear to be relevant to the construct of interest?

Fortunately, new tools are available to help practitioners locate good screening measures for grades K-12. An example is the Screening Tools Chart found at the National RTI Center’s Web site.

The specific measures used for screening are one part of the process, but the approach or model under which they are used is also important. Different schools operate under different screening approaches, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. In general, screening approaches can be categorized under the models listed below. These are explained by Jenkins and Johnson (2009) in more detail in an article on the NCLD’s RTI Action Network Web site.

Direct Route Models – In direct route models of screening, students who are identified as at-risk on the screening measure are placed directly into a Tier 2 intervention with no further testing. This type of a model requires a screening process to be highly accurate, identifying nearly all of the students who are at-risk while minimizing the number of students who are over-identified. Few available single screening measures are accurate enough to be used with great confidence in a direct route model -- too many at-risk students are missed, or too many students are falsely identified as at-risk, and valuable, limited intervention resources are unnecessarily provided.

Progress Monitoring Models – In progress monitoring (PM) models of screening, students initially identified as at-risk are monitored for a series of 5-6 weeks to determine if they "self-correct." Do they respond to Tier 1 instruction sufficiently so that they no longer appear at-risk on the screening measure? PM models have been shown to greatly improve accuracy, but they can be logistically difficult to manage. In a recent article published in TEACHING Exceptional Children, Davis, Lindo, and Compton (2007) provide an in-depth description of a PM model for screening (CEC members-only content).

Multiple Measure Models – In this approach to screening, more than one measure is used. The idea is that accuracy can be improved by administering several screening measures at the same time. Research has shown that such approaches result in higher accuracy levels than direct route approaches, but the interpretation of multiple cut scores, as well as the time and resources required to administer multiple measures to all students, make this approach less feasible for schools to implement.

Multiple Gating Models – Perhaps the easiest way to explain this model is by analogy. Multiple gating models are similar to the process of an eye exam. The eye chart is the initial screen that all of us take. Depending on how well we read the lines on the eye chart, we may be referred for further examination. The goal in this phase is to determine if the initial screening result was accurate and, if so, to what extent our vision is impaired, in what way (e.g., are we nearsighted or farsighted?), and finally to determine appropriate courses of action (think of the optometrist changing the lenses and asking “Is this better or worse?”). Multiple gating models generally are more accurate than direct route models but can be resource-intensive to implement.

In a secondary setting, the goal of screening procedures is to identify those students who are at-risk for not meeting the academic and behavior requirements of school early on. In high school, screening procedures can also help identify students at-risk for dropping out. In my next entry we’ll look at some great resources developed by the National High School Center to assist high schools in screening for students who are at-risk.

Thanks for reading!

Comments

[Darlene]

What types of screening tools have been considered to determine behavior issues?

[Evelyn Johnson]

Hi Darlene,
I'd direct you to the PBS website at http://www.pbis.org

Two instruments that I'm aware of are the SSBD - more info on this can be found at http://www.nhcebis.seresc.net/universal_ssbd
or the SSRS - more info can be found at http://psychcorp.pearsonassessments.com/HAIWEB/Cultures/en-us/Productdetail.htm?Pid=PAassrs&Mode=summary

[Regina]

What kind of tools do you recommend for screening math achievement? This is an area in which our district has not identified a good tracking tool. We use Aimsweb and STAR for reading.

[Janet Belanger]

Hi, I was following the comments to your post and I appreciate the websites you posted in reference to Darlene's question. Our school started implementing the use of RTI in the area of academics about three years ago. This year we are looking at using RTI for the purpose of improving behavior. What ideas can you give an overworked special education teacher on implementing RTI for behavior? I feel that the behavior of some my students with ADHD significantly interferes with their academic growth because of the amount of time they are “off task.” In addition, when I am addressing behavior, I am not teaching. Is there a “quick start” plan? I will research the web sights you already posted, but because of my time limitations, I would appreciate any shortcuts to getting started. Thank you.

[Janet Belanger]

In reference to Regina's question, we use Aimsweb for math fluency.

[Meghan]

I understand that the push is for general education teachers to become more involved in RTI but in my district the child study team is the only professionals taught how to screen children. Who does the screening in your district?

[Nora]

I really enjoyed reading this post. The information that you gave regarding the screening process is very beneficial to me because I am new to the RTI model. The issue of screening students is something that my school is still tweeking and trying to solidify. We have a team that is called the Student Success Team (SST) and this constists of a group of teachers as well as the curriculum specialist at our school. Once a student is brought up to SST the group brainstorms possible interventions.
We are currently switching to the AIMSweb reading assessment which is a relatively fast screening assessment so I was very excited to see that on the website (National Center on RTI) that you included in your post. I think it is so important for these screenings to be efficiant because, in my district, classroom teachers need to find the time to administer and score them. This has been an area of concern in the past but we are hoping that swithing from Qualitative Reading Inventory (QRI) to AIMSweb as our reading assessment it will take away a lot of these issues.

[Jamillah]

I found this blog very useful. My school has tried the standard RTI process of bringing students to the intervention team to discuss. The teachers the get a plan together with the team members and implement. We also do progress monitoring with the reading coach. Teachers identify struggling learners through this method mainly. it is very effective. The problem comes when teachers have too many struggling students, and give up on the intervention process. I think we should try the multiple gating approach. This would provide the team with a genral idea of the best interventions to use and woth whom. The number of interventions to be used may be cut down or more accurate. Teachers would not be as overwhelmed with the struggling students' needs. I did not realized that the RTI process has evolved so mich. This is very encouraging to future teacher leaders like myself!!

[Stacy R]

I find this blog to be very insightful. I am trying to return to teaching after a long hiatus of raising children and am currently working on a masters in special eduation. RTI is a relatively new concept for me and while I have been learning about what happens in each tier, I have not learned about the types of screening. Thank you for providing me with such a detailed starting point.

[Shelly Harris]

In response to Darlene's question about screening tools for behavor, our school uses our office discipline forms. If a student has 3 or more office discipline refferal forms in one month, our behavior team recommends more interventions.