Universal Screening Analysis

Universal Screening: It is designed to identify which students could be struggling with reading skills. The screening assessments are administered to all students in the class. They are valid, reliable, and demonstrate diagnostic accuracy for predicting learning or behavioral problems. The universal screening is to be administered 1-3 times per year. When it is only administered once, it will be preferable given in the beginning of the school year. This allows the teacher to identify students who are struggling in advance of issues arising. Screening is also used as a tool to answer vital questions such as whether the core curriculum is working or whether instruction is being effective.

Tier 1: This level encompasses class or school-wide interventions. All students receive Tier 1 services, regardless of their ability levels. Instruction is set in the general education classroom using curriculum and practices that are evidence-based, aligned with state or district standards, and incorporated differentiated instruction. Assessments include screening, continuous progress monitoring, and

outcome measures. Students identified as struggling readers during the universal screening receive frequent monitoring of their performance (at least once each week for a period of 6-10 weeks).
Tier 2: The tier is made up of those students who did not respond sufficiently to the high-quality instruction provided in the general education classroom.

This means the students identified through screening as being at-risk for poor learning outcomes. The targeted interventions and frequent monitoring that are characteristic of this tier still take place in the general education classroom or other general education settings within the school. Interventions involve providing a standard, validated instructional program to students in a group typically consisting of no more than five students. The interventions should be delivered by someone who has received extensive training into the intervention program. This could be a person in the position of general education teacher, paraprofessional, reading specialist, etc. Assessments at this level include progress monitoring and

diagnostic.
Tier 3: The tier focuses on the students who have not responded to primary or secondary level of prevention. It involves providing intensive, individualized interventions and doing frequent monitoring. Strategies must be valid and meet the explicit needs of each student. Typically, this instruction is delivered outside the general education classroom by who specialized in providing and designing individualized interventions. The assessments used are progress monitoring and diagnostic (same as Tier 2).

Question 2: Describe the two types of assessment used in RTI and the purpose of each.
Universal Screening: It is the administration of an assessment to all students in the classroom. This type of assessment is purposely used to determine which students may be struggling with reading skills. It occurs between 1-3 times per year (fall, winter, and spring), and it consists of brief assessments focused on target skills. Rank ordering can also be used to identify lowest performing students in a class/grade level, and it doesn’t matter which type of universal screening measure is used. Students with the lowest scores are identified as struggling readers.
Progress monitoring: This is when student learning is evaluated on a regular basis to provide useful feedback about performance to both students and teachers. Typically, monitoring occurs weekly or every two weeks and can be incorporated into lesson plans. The primary purpose of it is to determine which students are not responding sufficiently to instruction. It is important to note that this is a means of documenting students’ performance and deciding on an appropriate level of instructional intensity (tier decision). A form of progress monitoring used in the RTI approach is called curriculum-based measurement (CBM). When a teacher chooses to collect CBM data for the whole class, the data can be used to inform classroom instruction.