Use of Multiple Gating and Prescriptive Assessment
Procedures to Improve Early Childhood Services
and Accurate Identification of Young Children with Disabilities
ABSTRACT
Forty percent of U.S. children read below the basic level on national reading assessments (Wasik, 1997). Further, young children from poor neighborhoods, with limited English, and those with risks for or with disabilities fall behind from the outset and are at the highest risk for academic and social failure (Snow, Bums, & Griffin, 1998). In addition, the emotional and social development of young children is of critical importance to learning. Research indicates that behavioral and academic learning problems are inextricably linked throughout the life span. They are linked by transactional social processes wherein learning problems increase behavior problems; and behavior problems promote academic delay in the course of routine daily interactions with teachers and peers during early and middle childhood (Greenwood et al., 1992; Kamps et al., 1995; Kauffman, 1997; Walker, 1998). Current circumstances are that children who could benefit from early intervention for learning/behavior disorders are not identified early, and thus prevention services not provided. Traditional assessment practices are not sensitive at younger ages, thus schools are reluctant to make errors in identification. Additionally, parents and teachers are reluctant to stigmatize children with labels, even given that identification leads to services. As stated, "this reluctance has undoubtedly resulted in the denial of appropriate services to many young children at the age when they would obtain the greatest benefit from targeted interventions" (Office of Special Education, Research Priority p. C-2).
The purpose of this project is thus to develop a prescriptive assessment protocol for identifying and serving students at-risk and with EBD and LD in K through 2nd grade. Objectives include:
Objective I. To test a multiple-gating, prescriptive assessment protocol to identify young students with and at risk for learning disabilities and emotional/behavioral disorders.
Objective 2. To develop prescriptive pre-referral intervention procedures linked to assessment data to improve the academic, social, and behavioral performance of young children, and to identify environmental and contextual supports for maximizing student performance.
Objective 3. To develop, test, and disseminate effective training procedures to facilitate school staff's use of validated prescriptive assessment, and effective pre-referral intervention practices.
Presented is a plan to link prescriptive assessment protocols to the monitoring of pre-academic, social, and behavioral outcome indicators in a problem-solving intervention model for early identification and treatment of children at risk and with EBD and LD, K-2nd grade. The problem solving model (e.g., Deno, 1997) joins: (a) problem identification and (b) problem validation steps with (c) exploring solutions and (d) solution validation steps in a continuous progress monitoring system. Adding classwide screening and multiple gating assessment steps to identify lowest functioning students, intervention-referenced assessments are used to identify, prescribe, and prevent more serious learning and behavior problems. The contributions will include: the identification of environmental and administrative supports which enable effective pre-referral intervention practices, sustained student support (long-term implementation with ongoing student measurement), and accurate identification and appropriate services for young students with disabilities. Finally, a critical outcome will be a training package for ensuring "school-based experts" and "administrative structures" in the areas of prescriptive assessment, pre-referral intervention, and implementation and maintenance of effective practices for young children with EBD and LD.
