# Presentation: 897662

## Continuous Progress Monitoring Measures for Intervention Research and Accountability in Early Childhood

- Charles R. Greenwood, Dale Walker, Jay Buzhardt, and the IGDI Work Group
- Juniper Gardens Children’s Project
- University of Kansas

## The Problem and Need

- Too many children are not ready for kindergarten
- Many students are not responsive to the general curriculum
- Many students are identified too late to benefit from early intervention
- Many measures are not sensitive indicators of progress in the general curriculum

## The Solution

- Continuous progress monitoring is an evidence-based practice in K-12 special education (_[http://www.studentprogress.org/](http://www.studentprogress.org/)_ )
- CBM – Curriculum-based measurement is one example
- These measures are specifically intended to
- Identify children not responsive to instruction
-  Inform the decision making of teachers and practitioners managing intervention
- Similar measures for children younger than 5 years in preschool and childcare are just emerging

## Measures for Very Young Children: Individual Growth and Development Indicators (IGDIs)

- For Infants and Toddlers (_[http://www.igdi.ku.edu](http://www.igdi.ku.edu/)_)
- Early Communication (Language)
- Early Problem Solving (Cognition)
- Early Movement (Motor)
- Early Social (Social/Emotional)
- For Preschoolers (Early Literacy) (_[http://ggg.umn.edu/](http://ggg.umn.edu/)_)
- Picture naming (Spoken Vocabulary)
- Alliteration
- Rhyming

## The most well known IGDIs are Pediatric Growth Charts

- Widely used by pediatricians and parents

## Features of Progress Monitoring Measures

- Reflect progress toward a socially valid general outcome
- Strategic (a leading indicator) not comprehensive measurement
- Chart an individual’s progress
- Brief and quick to administer
- Repeatable (rate of growth, slope)
- Alternate forms (controls testing bias)
- Reliability

## More Features (Continued)

- Construct validity – Sensitive to growth over time
- Criterion validity – Measures what is intended
- Predictive validity – Early measures predict future status
- Benchmarks – Used to determine responsiveness to intervention
- Used by practitioners who instruct/serve children
- Program results compound up from individual results

## Supporting Conceptual and Policy Frameworks

- President’s 2002 Commission report on SPED
- Response to Intervention (RtI) (IDEA 2004)
- Universal screening and problem identification
- Problem solving and decision making
- Monitoring of individual progress
- Risk and Early Intervention
- Tiered Prevention/Intervention

- IGDIs, like CBM are measures based on the General Outcome Measurement (GOM) approach
- Fuchs & Deno, 1991
- Deno, 2002

## Conceptual Approaches to Progress Monitoring

- General Outcome Measurement
- Specific, not comprehensive
- Brief probes (several minutes)
- Repeatability enables estimates of rate of growth
- Provides timely data teachers can act on now
- Improvement indicates continue current intervention
- Mastery Monitoring
- Comprehensive
- Takes significant amounts of time to administer (e.g., 1 hr)
- Not readily repeatable
- Results available at standard time intervals, usable with the next cohort of students
- Mastery indicates a change in instruction is needed

## Unique Early Childhood Challenges

- Outcomes and key skills are often developmental or functional, rather than curriculum-based
- EC practitioners, compared to classroom teachers, are often less trained
- The EC system and its alignment with schools is highly variable across the country
- Practitioners lack a history of using data-based decision making and evidence-based practice

## One IGDI:Early Communication Indicator (ECI) for Infants and Toddlers

- The General Outcome
- “The child uses gestures, sounds, words, or sentences to convey wants and needs or to express meaning to others."
- In a national survey of parents and practitioners, expressive communication was a highly rated outcome of early childhood
- Priest et al., 2001

## ECI Constructs and Key Skills

## Range in Young Children’s Expressive Communication Skills

- Infants:
- Gestures

- Toddlers:
- Single and Multi-Word Utterances

## Administration

- Administration Procedures
- Toy-play setting with familiar adult as play partner
- 6-minute testing sessions
- Play partner’s role is to facilitate play and follow child’s lead
- Set-up/clean-up/put away
- Alternate Toy Forms
- Observational Recording Procedures

- Toy Form A: House

- Toy Form B: Barn

## Scaling-up

- Websites and online informational and technical support

## Slide 18

## The IGDI Websites are linked to each other

- Continuum of early communication and literacy skills by measure

## Individual Level Results: Total Communication Growth Chart

- 36 Mos Expectation

- Child’s Observed Trajectory

- Normative Trajectory

## Program-level Results

## Learners’ Proficiency Distribution

## Current and Future Research

- Current work is focused in several areas:
- Predictive validity of the ECI in terms of early language and early literacy in preschool
- Developing benchmarks based on predictive validity findings
- Experimental demonstrations that children whose Home Visitors use progress monitoring, vs. those that do not, obtain better outcomes
- RTI approaches using IGDIs in preschool

## Predictive Validity within Total Communication 

**Notes:**
Regarding the third research question, a linear growth curve model was run for the composite Total Communication score. Cut points were determined to be at 18, 36 and 42 months by examining a plot of the means.  The rate of change between 6 and 18 months is a significant predictor of the 42mo. outcome, as well as the status at 18mo. There was not a significant prediction to 42mo. from the rate of change between 21 and 36 months or the status at 36 months. Alpha 1 and 3 are change scores for their respective slopes, and Alpha 2 and 4 are the latent means for their respective status. Theta’s indicate the error variance for measurements.

## Implications/Conclusion

- IGDIs and progress monitoring are
- Evidence-based approaches to early intervening
- Potential for reducing early risk for delay/disability
- IGDIs for young children are past proof of concept
- IGDIs have rigorous technical features
- Work remains
- Improving existing measures
- Developing new measures
- Linking measures to interventions
- Scaling up use

## References

- Carta, J. J., Greenwood, C. R., Walker, D., Kaminski, R., Good, R., McConnell, S. R., & McEvoy, M. (2005). Individual growth and development indicators (IGDIs): Assessment that guides intervention for young children.* Young Exceptional Children, 4*, 15-27.
- Greenwood, C. R., Carta, J. J., & Walker, D. (2004).  Individual growth and development indicators (IGDI's): Tools for assessing intervention results for infants and toddlers.  In B. Heward et al., (Eds.), *Focus on Behavior Analysis in Education: Achievements, Challenges, and Opportunities* (Chapter 6, pp. 103-124). Pearson/Prentice-Hall: Columbus, OH.
- Greenwood, C. R., Carta, Greenwood, C. R., Walker, D., Carta, J. J., & Hughes, K. (2006). Preliminary investigators of the application of the Early Communication Indicator (ECI) for infants and toddlers. *Journal of Early Intervention*,* 28*(3), 178-196.
-  J. J., Baggett, K., Buzhardt, J., Walker, D., & Terry, B. (2008). Best practices integrating progress monitoring and response to intervention concepts into early childhood systems for infants and toddlers. In A. Thomas, J. Grimes & J. Gruba (Eds.), *Best practices in school psychology V*. Washington DC: National Association of School Psychology, Washington, DC.