Project 3 Engaging Educators around Classification Systems in Schools (T3)

Florida State University, Tallahassee FL

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The persistent misidentification of students with specific learning disabilities (SLDs) is a public health concern, with dire consequences for children’s healthy academic and socioemotional development. Despite decades of research on SLD classification, there is limited uptake and use of these findings in school assessment practices, which include screening, progress monitoring, and comprehensive evaluation within a multi-tiered system of supports. There is a lack of alignment between research-based and school-based classification of SLD. While research evidence accumulated over decades provides relative certainty about how SLDs in reading and oral language might be expressed in children, these prescriptive classifications are not always reflected in the identification and eligibility processes that qualify students for support services in school. The situation is particularly problematic for students from marginalized groups, who must demonstrate that their underachievement is “unexpected” and not due primarily to environmental or economic disadvantage and language or cultural differences. These criteria make it disproportionately more likely for children from race- and ethnic-monitory groups and children growing up in poverty and under-resourced communities not to receive adequate support services to address their learning difficulties or disabilities. This project aims to tackle the research-to-practice gap in the uptake of evidence-based assessment practices (EBPs) used in schools to recognize and respond to learning difficulties and disabilities. Specifically, we will leverage advances in effective approaches to bidirectional community engagement and the field of implementation science to (a) determine barriers and facilitators matched to culturally responsive strategies for implementing assessment EBPs (Aim 1) and (b) determine the usability of a prototype packaged professional learning community for supporting assessment EBPs (Aim 2). The work captured in both aims will be conducted in partnership with schools and districts that serve substantive proportions of historically and systematically marginalized groups and communities. Project sites represent a range of diversity that is representative of many communities across the U.S, including urban and rural geographic locations, low-income households in under-resourced communities, and race-, ethnic-, and language-minority groups. Following the broad themes in the RFA to (2) further extend translational research; (5) enhance the research base on early prevention efforts; and ensure (6) significant focus on diverse populations, this project addresses the call for a …required project [that] must focus on examining engagement approaches with communities of interest to the themes of the Center. This proposal embraces the diversity that is inherent in US public schools and elevates the challenges and opportunities for developing the translational research base to ensure school success for all children.