CEHD Research

This poster reports on three studies conducted by staff at the National Center on Educational Outcomes and Institute on Community Integration. Study 1 was a national survey of Teachers of Students with Visual Impairments (TVIs) asking about approaches to teaching reading with technology. Study 2 was an in-depth interview with TVIs that provided information on models for technology-assisted reading assessments for students with visual impairments. Study 3 was an observational interview of students using assistive technology platforms for reading tasks. All three studies provide evidence of the current state of assistive technology use in schools for students with visual impairments. Findings and implications will be used in the development of assessments for accountability.
Author(s)/Presenter(s): Joe Timmons, Research Fellow and Jason Altman, Research Coordinator

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With current policy requiring states to publicly report on the participation and performance of students with disabilities in large-scale assessments the goals of this research were to determine: (1) whether recent progress has been made in publicly reporting data from state assessments of students with disabilities, and (2) the nature of trends over four years of participation and performance data for students with disabilities. We uncovered considerable evidence of improvements in reporting quality as well as participation rates for the regular assessment that were relatively stable across years, with median rates for most states rising above 95 percent by the 2004-05 school year. In addition, average percentages of students with disabilities performing at the proficient or above level showed moderate increases across the four years for both reading and math in elementary and middle schools. The analyses of trends identifies some areas of increased reporting and better data, but they also re-emphasize the need for states to publicly report data for educators, parents, and others to see. Further, our findings make evident the need for states to strive to include all students with disabilities, so that it is possible to look at the same data points across time.
Author(s)/Presenter(s): Jason Altman, Research Coordinator

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As increasing numbers of students with disabilities participate in annual state achievement tests, it is vital to ensure the validity of scores produced. Certain test characteristics such as format, mode of presentation, or test content may obscure a student’s true proficiency. When a test fails to measure a student’s skill, the validity of the scores are undermined, or the test lacks “accessibility”. One method for improving test accessibility is with a partial auditory accommodation tool called The Reading Pen. The Reading Pen is a small hand held device designed with optical character recognition to provide pronunciations, synonyms, and definitions of words. By providing a means of temporarily overcoming limited decoding or fluency, some students may have increased “access” to reading tests in that they will be able to more fully demonstrate their skill in reading comprehension. Students in general and special education (n = 77) in 6th and 8th grades from a large suburban district were trained to use the Reading Pen, and measures of reading comprehension were taken with and without the pen. This poster will present a summary of our findings on the effectiveness of the Reading Pen as a testing accommodation, and will discuss implications for students with disabilities related to reading.
Author(s)/Presenter(s): Martha Thurlow, Phd, Ross Moen, PhD, Kristi Lui, Sarah Scullin, Adam Lekwa

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This poster will summarize an evaluation done of Value of Individual Choices and Experiences (VOICE). This innovative approach to assure community-based supports are meeting the needs of persons with disabilities as individuals replaces an approach based on a set of standards that assumed “quality” in supports looked about the same for everyone.
Most people familiar with VOICE were satisfied with its accuracy through gathering information directly from the person receiving services and those who know the person best, such as family members, close friends and agency staff members who provide support on a day-to-day basis. The evaluation discovered and described many outcomes related to use of the VOICE that were not included in earlier approaches to quality assurance including encouragement for agencies to provide supports that exceed minimum requirements, and it’s success as a problem-solving tool for individual support teams. There were concerns about reliability of VOICE depending on which day data were collected, and which reviewers were collecting data and drawing conclusions. VOICE holds promise in being used in other areas of the state and with additional populations, but its growth is stunted and future is tenuous because its funding through state government must always be considered as temporary.
Author(s)/Presenter(s): John G. Smith, Project Coordinator (contact person), Jerry W. Smith, Project Coordinator, Charlie Lakin, Principal Investigator, Sheryl A. Larson, Senior Research Associate

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The purpose of this poster presentation is to report the results of a two-year study conducted at the Research Institute on Progress Monitoring (RIPM). The goal of the study was to develop and examine the technical adequacy of general outcome measures (GOMs) in math for students with significant disabilities. Recently stepped up emphasis on academic performance of students with significant cognitive disabilities has raised a question: “How do we know if students are learning?”. Mastery monitoring has traditionally been a prevalent method of assessing if students with significant cognitive disabilities have learnt a particular skill. In contrast, our research effort focused on developing measures that could be used by teachers to track progress of students with significant cognitive disabilities towards math content based on alternate achievement standards. The results of reliability, validity and growth analyses will be reported for four GOMs in math: “number identification”, “quantity discrimination”, “number order”, and “number facts”. It will be concluded that that three out of the four GOMs show promising results in being able to provide teachers with meaningful information about the progress of students with significant cognitive disabilities in math.
Author(s)/Presenter(s): Teri Wallace, PhD, and Renáta Tichá, PhD

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The training and development of direct support professionals is an important component to easing the many challenges this workforce faces and to the provision of quality community supports for people with disabilities. Competency-based training is an instructional model that many disability support organizations turn to as a way to train direct support professionals around specific skills and knowledge areas. Online instructional programs also adopted this model. Monitoring data provided by online training programs allow for a variety of approaches and methods to answer many evaluation and research questions. This poster presents analyses of such data to better understand the how an online training program for direct support professionals is accessed and used. Research implications and directions for future research are also presented.
Author(s)/Presenter(s): Derek Nord, Research Associate

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This poster describes research efforts on Girls' Education in eight countries. The research is supported by CARE, International (for which the U of M is a research partner). In all countries, CARE local offices are implementing interventions to improve girls' levels of empowerment and success in schools. Cohort I countries (Mali, Tanzania, Cambodia, Honduras) will use a multiple intervention model and will likely use regression analysis and qualitative descriptors to measure change. Cohort II countries (India, Bangladesh, Malawi, Ghana) will implement a single intervention approach and likely attempt a quasi-experimental design study. Implications and challenges of field-based international research are outlined on the poster.
Author(s)/Presenter(s): Christopher Johnstone, Research Associate and Director of International Initiatives and Relations

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Over the past two decades students’ engagement in school and learning has emerged as the “bottom line” issue across hundreds of dropout prevention and recovery programs in the U.S. Schools, districts, and states need to implement scientifically-based models that keep youth engaged in school and on the road to graduation. Check & Connect is one such model. One of 22 dropout prevention interventions rated by the U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse, Check & Connect is the only program found to have strong evidence of positive effects for staying in school.
Check & Connect is based on the following assumptions: (1) Leaving school prior to graduation is not an instantaneous event; (2) solving the dropout problem will require a multifaceted effort of home, school, community, and youth; (3) students must be empowered to take control of their own behavior; and (4) schools must be designed to reach out to families in partnership with community. The Check & Connect intervention has two main components: The Check component involves continually assessing student engagement through close monitoring of student performance and progress indicators (e.g., attendance, suspension, grades, credit accrual); and the Connect component involves a mentor intervening in a timely fashion in partnership with school personnel, family members, and community service providers based on individual student performance information obtained through the Check component
Author(s)/Presenter(s): Sandra Christenson, professor; Karen Stout, research associate; and Ann Mavis, coordintor.

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