Universal Screening

Universal screening is the process of quickly assessing most or all of the students in a school. The information can be used for instructional planning and to identify quickly which children are likely to need instructional support.

Instructional Support for Children

Once children are identified as needing assistance, then school based professionals need to identify what type of intervention or remediation is needed.  Based upon either STEEP screening on others types of screening (e.g., DIBELS) we assist schools to match specific types of proven assistance to a child's unique needs.  Many schools are using CBM and DIBELS for assessment but are not going the next step and helping those children who are not achieving benchmarks.  The assessments can be very useful for instructional planning.  We help schools to implement a very simple system for making a decision about which child needs what kind of help.  DIBELS intervention training is a more comprehensive reading program which goes beyond merely teaching what is tested by DIBELS.  The focus is on finding the right type of assistance for the right child at the right time. We have developed very clear and empirically supported decision rules for who needs assistance, what type of assistance they need, and whether the resulting progress made by a child is sufficient. 

Teacher Support

The most important thing we do is to help schools support the teacher.  Teachers have so many responsibilities; hence, assessments that can't be easily used or instructional strategies that are too time consuming are useless to them.  We work with schools to plan in advance how teachers can be supported before and during the assessment and instructional support phases.  This frequently involves working with specialists, including specialists with new names (e.g., interventionists, mentors) to build a strong teacher support component into the process.