Intervention Programming and Assessment Practices That Promote Students’ Skills

Dear Colleagues,

Intervention programming and assessment systems in K-12 schools have included the employment of strategy instruction and standardized tests (e.g., IQ , academic achievement) since the 1910s as a method by which to design and monitor programming to help students improve their abilities in reading, writing, math, and life skills. These practices have been known as a wait-to-fail model, in which students are offered the opportunity to learn and demonstrate their grade-level ability. If students demonstrated difficulties by the end of the third grade, standardized tests assessing their IQ and academic achievement would be administered to help determine whether a student had a disability and what type of classroom/instruction should be offered. These tests posed ethical problems, such as asking specific questions about movies and government, as well as the fact that students could receive bonus points for answering rapidly. Delaying this process until the age of eight also posed an ethical problem.

A better alternative is offering an assessment and intervention system as early as kindergarten, with students’ progress being monitored weekly. All of the educators at a school should review the students’ curriculum-based measurement (CBM) scores, design and manage intervention programming, and employ a school team approach to decision making regarding students’ programming and placement; the school team should decide whether special education is warranted in order to determine the next steps. These practices offer a more effective and progressive method with which to help children, and are the key elements of multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS). This Special Issue welcomes empirical and conceptual submissions that focus on intervention programming and assessment systems and practices, how they can be applied in schools, and how this could be a renewed opportunity for educators in schools to collaborate in instruction and assessment-based decision making for possible special education.

Dr. Michael William Dunn
Guest Editor

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• student who struggle with reading
• students who struggle with writing
• students who struggle with math
• students who struggle with behavior
• intervention programming for academics and/or behavior
• multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS)
• response to intervention (RTI)