"Such happiness as life is capable of comes from the full participation of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each changing situations of experience its own full and unique meaning."
John Dewey
The Problem Solving Approach
Michelle Fattig, Ed.S.
The rationale behind the CBDM (RTI) team is the process of moving toward problem solving assessment. What is Problem Solving Assessment? Problem Solving Assessment (PSA) is an educational assessment model that seeks to maximize the resources available to schools while at the same time minimizing costs. Many of the resources available to schools reside in the school, in the home, and in the larger community. Traditionally these resources have remained basically untapped. Lacking are the coordination, organization, and attitude necessary to utilize this pool of potential solutions to learning problems. PSA is an education model that seeks to empower individuals within schools and communities to help provide solutions to the educational problems of our students.
With the greater social and legal stress placed upon schools for increased documentation, this model allows schools to demonstrate greater accountability. Within this model, regular and special educators are seen as partners who cooperate, beginning at the prereferral level and beyond to help children and families. In PSA, students having problems that affect their education are seen in the context of their whole environment. The difficulties they experience are not seen as solely residing in the child. Instead, an ecological view is encouraged. Student identification in terms of disability labeling becomes less of an issue as more emphasis is placed on finding solutions for individual learning problems. These solutions emphasize not only maximizing student strengths and minimizing weaknesses, but also trying to match these strengths with school/district strengths and resources (UNK, professional seminar series).
Problem Solving Assessment
As a model, CBDM (RTI) teams focus on:
1. Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM or Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills-DIBELS)
2. Curriculum-Based Assessment
3. Active and prevalent CBDM (RTI) teams
4. Thorough assessment of building resources
5. Thorough assessment of curriculum
6. Prescriptive teaching
7. Child centered decision making
Problem Solving Process
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?
Implement the Plan
(With integrity and fidelity)
Carry out the intervention.
Evaluate
(Progress monitoring and assessment)
Did our plan work?
If not?
Begin the process all over again.
Dr. W. David Tilly III, Heartland AEA 11, (2005)
Curriculum-Based Measurement
Curriculum-Based Measurement is based on the principle that schools should test students over what is actually taught in the classroom instead of relying solely upon national achievement tests to measure student progress. It can provide performance data regarding which areas of the actual curriculum are being learned. This method should be balanced in combination with nationally normed/standardized testing. CBA may provide a fairer, less culturally biased, easy, cost effective, quick overview of a student's performance. The results also have more meaning to the teachers and parents as it is directly related to the student, curriculum used, and teaching style of the classroom teacher involved. Standardized tests provided an overview of the student, which will have meaning from state to state across the country (UNK, professional seminar series).
Important Considerations
Educationally Relevant & AlterableLess Educationally Relevant & InalterableKnown InformationThis is What We Want!Disregarded or Low PriorityUnknown InformationThese are Assessment QuestionsDon't Go Here!(Howell, K., 2005)
Curriculum-Based Assessment/Evaluation
Shifting the Emphasis from Measurement to Assessment
Assessment/evaluation is a process of comparison that leads ultimately to the drawing of conclusions and the making of judgments. To make good decisions we need to elevate the role of evaluation over measurement. Stressing the dynamic nature of the problem-solving process does this. It is also done by seeing to it that measures (in the form of reviews, interviews, observations and tests) are given to answer specific questions, not as part of a standard menu.
Shifting the focus from unalterable to alterable variables:
Moving the focus from unalterable variables to alterable variables allows educators to get information about things that they can do something about. A curriculum is a pre-specified structured set of learning outcomes, or tasks, that educators call goals or objectives.
Task analysis:
Start with the hardest item and go down to the easier ones. If the child doesn't pass the highest level… i.e.- the child may not be able to 'produce' the right letter, they may be able to 'identify' the right letter. The definition of a 'task' is the objective. The objective could be related to content, behavior, conditions or Criteria for Acceptable Performance (CAP). Fluency - Requires accuracy first
Automaticity - Maintaining fluency and accuracy in context a task is more than content. It's all of the components above. If a student makes errors in a timed reading, don't give an error passage, just don't time it. Have them practice it multiple times.
PRACTICE is more powerful than FEEDBACK! Caution on giving feedback . . . if you say, "Good, you got the answer right", the child may have copied the answer from a neighbor so they just received positive feedback for cheating.
Place the emphasis on the process rather than the product. A teacher that has to answer the same question over and over, teach them the procedures for figuring out the answer themselves. Relate to wearing a coat at recess, remembering their homework . . . (Howell, 2005).
Curriculum-Based Decision Making (RTI) TEAMS
In Problem Solving Assessment, an expanded and important role is also envisioned for the CBDM (RTI) team. Currently, many teams consist of regular educators and are used as a "rubber stamp" to send referred students on for testing. They lack the procedures, time, and expertise to provide meaningful suggestions to one of their peers having problems with an individual student. In PSA, emphasis is placed on providing effective intervention sooner rather than later. After careful analysis on building resources, the team may consist of regular educators, special educators, counselors, school psychologists, behavior interventionists, and the child's parents. Each member brings his or her own expertise regarding the child and education, personality, and assessment to the table. Not only does this arrangement have the chance of providing earlier intervention, it may cut the costs of later testing and more importantly, lessen the stigma to students who go through the verification procedures and emerge with a Special Education label. In the PSA model, emphasis is placed on students being helped by interventions in the regular classroom if possible. If not, resources already available to the school can generate much data concerning the student before referral to the Multidisciplinary team.
BUILDING RESOURCES
Analyzing and maximizing the use of building and district resources makes sense in terms of providing quality service to children and their families as well as recognizing the need for affordability. Tapping the resources that are already available is a crucial step in the ecological approach to child-focused decision-making. Utilizing these virtually untapped resources may allow for a more cost-effective approach to interventions, while providing services to the child that may have previously remained unrecognized by the team.
ECOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT
Ethically, a child should receive assessment based on the notion, "One score does not a label make." Assessment should include multiple sources, multiple settings, and multiple methods. The active CBDM (RTI) team should effectively screen those who do not need a full comprehensive assessment. For those students, who have been determined by the team to be in need of a full comprehensive assessment, every effort should be made to look at the whole picture. Is this truly a behavior problem, or could it be an intolerant adult problem? Is this truly a learning problem, or is it a teaching style/learning style mismatch (Curwin & Mendler, 1988)? Defining the strengths and weaknesses of children through the testing process, and applying this knowledge within the team setting allows for more appropriate interventions to be generated (UNK, professional seminar series).
PRESCRIPTIVE TEACHING
The concept of prescriptive teaching assumes that each individual teacher has certain teaching strengths or certain modes of teaching in which they are most comfortable and that each individual student has certain learning strengths or modes in which he or she learns best. The goal of PSA is to discover each of these modes and to be flexible in trying to match teaching style with student learning style. To do this can help students reach their potential and reduce frustration of teachers who are doing their best to help the student learn. Be creative with staff usage! Think "ours," not "theirs and ours."
References
Daly, E. & Glover, T. (2006). Response to Intervention. Retrieved 8/15/07 from:
http://www.nde.state.ne.us/SPED/RTI%20Video%20Conference/Ed%20Daly%20Todd%20Glover% 20UNL.pdf
Fuchs, L.S., Fuchs, D., & Speece, D.L., (2002). Treatment validity as a unifying construct for identifying learning disabilities. Learning Disabilities Quarterly,25, 33-45.
Fuchs, D., Mock, D., Morgan, P.L., & Young, C.L., (2003). Responsiveness-to-Intervention: Definitions, evidence, and implications for the learning disabilities construct. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 18, 157- 171.
Howell, K. (2005) RTI presentation, ESU 10, Kearney Nebraska.
NASDSE, 2005. Response to Intervention Policy Considerations and Implementation, Alexandria, VA. www.nasdse.org <http://www.nasdse.org>.
Pre-referral Intervention Teams, Multidisciplinary Teams, and Section 504: How can we possibly do it all? Workshop of the Professional Development Seminar Series sponsored by the University of Nebraska @ Kearney, Tilly, W.D., (2005) Student Improvement Team presentation. Retrieved 8/16/07 from:
http://www.studentimprovementteam.org/Downloads/PM%20Resource%20Book.doc