Instructional Decision Making in Iowa IOWA

Iowa’s Experience: How it all started Began in Discussions with stakeholders Parents Teachers Administrators Area Education Agency Personnel Policy Makers Over 4000 persons contributed

Iowa’s Professional System Prior to Change – Our Early Response to “Problems” Standard battery of tests for placements Academic Status Behavior Observation Intellect Speech Language Motor Screening Health History Vision Hearing Educational History “One size fits all.”

Professional System Prior to Change System structure forced certain professional behaviors Evaluations based on nationally standardized tests Frequently focussed on unalterable variables (e.g., personality, IQ, presumed traits) Frequent difficulty in linking assessment to school expectations Was summative rather than formative “Have tos” limited “want tos” in assessment Results of referrals were “placements” rather than matching of student needs to instruction Our system was global - we moved problems - and often we didn’t solve them

System Prior to Change Special Education Sea of Ineligibility General Education Graden, 1998

A Series of Questions Were Asked What is working with the current system? What components of the system are in need of reconsideration? What barriers get in the way of trying these changes? Important - There was no presumption that what we were doing was not being done well.

Foundation Principles – Utilization of Resources Functional Assessment. Students will benefit by requiring assessments which are functionally oriented and built upon a question oriented assessment plan that tests hypotheses leading to an understanding of factors directly effecting the individual's learning or behavioral difficulty. Developing Appropriate Instructional and Support Interventions. Students will benefit from a variety of innovative instructional and support interventions which will focus on bringing services to students and not students to the services. Direct and Frequent Progress Monitoring. Students will benefit by procedures which directly and frequently monitor behaviors that are the focus of interventions. Monitoring procedures permit ongoing decision making and adjustment of interventions when needed and thereby heightening the probability of helping students acquire new skills, knowledge, or ways of functioning. Outcome Oriented Criterion. Students will benefit by an outcome criterion, focusing on gains in students' skills, when adopted and applied to decisions about programming, placement, and reviews/evaluations.

The Problem Solving Process Implement Plan (Treatment Integrity) Carry out the intervention Evaluate (Progress Monitoring Assessment) Did our plan work? Define the Problem (Screening and Diagnostic Assessments) What is the problem and why is it happening? Develop a Plan (Goal Setting and Planning) What are we going to do ?

Data Collection and Charting Intensive Instruction Baseline 1 Goal Vanderburgh Student Improvement is Job #1 Goal Area Name Service Providers Parent Participation Carlos Reading Parent will provide extra oral reading time at home. They would like graph sent home biweekly. District School Year Teacher Goal By June, given a DIBELS progress monitoring passage Carlos will read 70 words correct in one minute. M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Trendline =.07 WCPM Trendline =.54 WCPM Trendline =1.93 WCPM

We Realized We were doing case-by case interventions We found out that in many cases students had similar intervention needs The key to success with students instructionally has to do with “Match” of instruction to student learning needs We developed a method for doing group-level diagnostics for early literacy Called it 4-box strategy

Diagnostic Assessment Questions “Why is the student not performing at the expected level?” “What is the student’s instructional need?”

Phonemic Awareness Alphabetic Principle Accuracy & Fluency Vocabulary Comprehension 5 Essential Components of Reading Instruction The Diagnostic Process

Enabling Skills Enabling skills are skills that could be considered prerequisite skills for the demonstration of proficient performances on larger assessments measures They represent the sub-skills of higher order performance demonstration Deficiencies in enabling skills will often result in lower performance on assessments

Enabling Skills for Reading Comprehension Accuracy of connected text (decoding, word recognition) Fluent reading of connected text (automaticity, smoothness, prosody) Vocabulary Prior knowledge

Organizing Fluency Data: Making the Instructional Match Group 1: Accurate and Fluent Group 2: Accurate but Slow Rate Group 3: Inaccurate and Slow Rate Group 4: Inaccurate but High Rate Group 1: Dig Deeper in the areas of vocabulary and specific comprehension strategies. Group 2: Build reading fluency skills. (Repeated Reading, Paired Reading, etc.) Embed comprehension checks/strategies. Group 3: Conduct an error analysis to determine instructional need. Teach to the instructional need paired with fluency building strategies. Embed comprehension checks/strategies. Group 4: Conduct Table-Tap Method. If student can correct error easily, teach student to self- monitor reading accuracy. If reader cannot self- correct errors, complete an error analysis to determine instructional need. Teach to the instructional need.

What will we do with them once we’ve grouped them?

Data Collection and Charting Intensive Instruction Baseline 1 Goal Vanderburgh Student Improvement is Job #1 Goal Area Name Service Providers Parent Participation Carlos Reading Parent will provide extra oral reading time at home. They would like graph sent home biweekly. District School Year Teacher Goal By June, given a DIBELS progress monitoring passage Carlos will read 70 words correct in one minute. M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Trendline =.07 WCPM Trendline =.54 WCPM Trendline =1.93 WCPM

Impact on Students Knoxville Middle School Group 1 Comprehension Instruction % % Group 2 Fluency instruction % % Group 3 Decoding instruction % % %

Results Data: 1 year 1 st YEAR of Implementation Lynnville-Sully Elementary Proficiency Data Target Assessment Chosen: DIBELS (At Benchmark) Spring Data st Grade 79% 83% 2 nd Grade 48% 81% 3 rd Grade 39% 79% 4 th Grade 50% 58% 5 th Grade 56% 80%

Keys to Success Gather diagnostic data when necessary to make the appropriate response Group students with similar instructional needs Use researched based materials/strategies Implement with fidelity Use formative and progress monitoring data to guide decisions