George H. Noell

Assuring the Form Has Substance Treatment Plan Implementation as the Foundation of Assessing Response to Intervention

Assessing response to intervention (RTI) is a complex process that requires selecting interventions, identifying a reasonable strength of intervention, implementing the intervention, assessing progress, and applying decision rules to the resulting data. Appropriate standards and practices are critically important for all of these activities. However, the implementation of interventions has received scant attention in the RTI literature to date despite emerging empirical evidence that assuring intervention implementation may be one of the most challenging aspects of implementing RTI. This article discusses the critical role of plan implementation within RTI. Documentation that interventions were implemented is both a substantive necessity for implementing an entitlement process in which services are integrated with assessment (RTI) and a due process protection for students. The current data regarding the assessment and improvement of intervention plan implementation is also briefly reviewed.

Using Performance Feedback to Enhance Implementation Fidelity of the Problem-Solving Team Process.

Implementation integrity is a potentially critical issue for problem-solving teams (PST) and most response-to-intervention models. The current study hypothesized that providing performance feedback, which has consistently been shown to increase implementation integrity, to PSTs would enhance the procedural integrity of the process. The PSTs for three elementary schools were provided performance feedback with a 20-item checklist created from the literature. A multiple-baseline design across schools revealed an immediate change in level after providing performance feedback. The resulting percentages of non-overlapping data were 90.9%, 90.0%, and 100%. However, PSTs still did not monitor student progress, assess the effectiveness of the intervention, or measure the integrity with which the intervention was implemented even after receiving feedback. Thus, providing performance feedback could be a method to increase the fidelity with which critical components of data-based problem-solving are implemented, but these data suggest the need for additional research.

When Does Consultation Lead to Intervention Implementation? Critical Issues for Research and Practice

For consultation to result in the delivery of services to students, it must lead to implementation of an intervention. For this reason, intervention implementation is the crucial challenge for the practice of consultation and, as a result, is the critical research need. The argument is advanced that too little is known about the extent to which teachers actually implement interventions following consultation, as opposed to what they say about implementation, because implementation has infrequently been directly measured. The consultation database also provides few analyses of the conditions under which consultees do and do not implement interventions. This article considers fundamental issues of definition, measurement, and design as they relate to the study of the relationship between consultation and intervention implementation.

Value-Added Assessment of Teacher Preparation An Illustration of Emerging Technology

Broad-based empirical outcomes assessment is an increasingly evident part of governmental services and this trend is particularly apparent in education. The clearest manifestation of this trend in education has been the advent of high-stakes broad-based testing and accountability programs in K-12 education. Although this assessment regime has not yet been used to assess the efficacy of teacher preparation programs, the data management capacity and statistical technology is now emerging to make this possible. This article presents data from the 1st year of a pilot study examining the methodological and practical issues involved in implementing a value-added assessment of teacher preparation based on a massive multivariate longitudinal database. The pilot data are discussed in relation to the literature pertaining to value-added assessments in K-12 education. Selected research needs and practical concerns related to the use of value-added models for the assessment of teacher preparation are discussed.

Do Student Achievement Outcomes Differ Across Teacher Preparation Programs? An Analysis of Teacher Education in Louisiana

Achievement outcomes for students taught by recent program completers of Louisiana’s teacher preparation programs (TPPs) are examined using hierarchical linear modeling of State student achievement data in English language arts, reading, mathematics, science, and social studies. The current year’s achievement in each content area is predicted using previous achievement data, student characteristics, classroom characteristics (e.g., percentage of students with disabilities), school characteristics, and attendance of teachers and students. The contribution of a teacher having recently completed a specific TPP is modeled at the classroom level as an indicator variable for each TPP. Results for programs with 25 or more new teachers are reported. Results demonstrate substantial overlap in confidence intervals (CI) among programs. In some instances, 68% and/or 95% CI for programs in specific content areas did not overlap results for the average new teacher or experienced teachers (i.e., they were lower than average new teachers or higher than average experienced certified teachers). Results varied across content areas for some programs.

The Fundamental Role of Intervention Implementation in Assessing Response to Intervention

Although the assessment of response to intervention (RTI) as a service delivery model has undergone considerable development over the last decade, all of the critical elements that must be in place for RTI to be successful have not received similar attention. One of the fundamental elements of RTI is the implementation of interventions. However, implementation of interventions appears to be commonly assumed within discussions of RTI rather than considered a major issue to be resolved. Emerging research suggests that assuring treatment or intervention implementation is, in fact, a substantial requirement for problem-solving services to students in schools (Noell, in press). This chapter describes some of the critical conceptual issues related to intervention implementation, and provides a selected review of the research regarding the assessment and assurance of intervention implementation.

Programming for Maintenance: An Investigation of Delayed Intermittent Reinforcement and Common Stimuli to Create Indiscriminable Contingencies

Generalization across time or maintenance of behavior change is a fundamental concern for behavior analysts and educators that remains insufficiently understood. This study examined the maintenance of mathematics responding during and following delayed intermittent reinforcement when common stimuli were programmed across the treatment and maintenance phases. Two third-grade girls who were referred by their classroom teacher due to concerns in the area of mathematics participated. Students were exposed to baseline, contingent reinforcement, delayed intermittent reinforcement, and a maintenance condition. The maintenance condition followed exposure to delayed intermittent reinforcement and included common stimuli from the reinforcement condition, but did not include a contingency for correct responding. Both students exhibited substantial prolonged maintenance during this condition. Implications of these results for future research examining maintenance and applied programming for maintenance are discussed.

Toward a Behavior Analytic Approach to Consultation

Of the developments in psychology and education over the last 50 years, those in behavioral psychology have been among the most important. Behavioral psychology has amassed an impressive technology for responding effectively to many problems with important social and pragmatic implications. Many volumes such as this one and entire scholarly journals have been devoted exclusively to descriptions of the effectiveness of behavioral technology for a wide array of problems. The application of behavioral technologies through a problem-solving process serves as the foundation for this volume. The efficacy of the application of behavioral technologies in a wide range of settings, targeting an array of problems, and incorporating a diversity of treatment agents is evident in the continuing stream of publications in this area. Unquestionably, the technology has been invented and validated.

Assessing the Assessments of Teacher Preparation

Teacher preparation programs have both a desire and a responsibility to demonstrate, with affirmative evidence, that teacher education makes a difference in PreK–12 student learning. Program faculty need good data to make decisions about the progress of students, whom to recommend for state licensure, and how to improve teacher education. This article describes an American Psychological Association task force report that discusses 3 measures of program effectiveness that have potential for both informing the public and providing useful data for programs to continuously improve: (a) outcome data from PreK–12 student academic growth as assessed by standardized tests; (b) teacher performance as evaluated by valid and reliable observational instruments; and (c) judgments of graduates, their PreK–12 students, and those who hire teachers as gauged by surveys. Although no technique of data collection and analysis is perfect, this report provides directions for teacher educators who seek to continuously improve their programs.

Sequencing instructional tasks: A comparison of contingent and noncontingent interspersal of preferred academic tasks

This study compared two strategies for increasing accurate responding on a low-preference academic task by interspersing presentations of a preferred academic task. Five children attending a preschool program for children with delayed language development participated in this study. Preferred and nonpreferred tasks were identified through a multiple-stimulus, free-operant preference assessment. Contingent access to a preferred academic task was associated with improved response accuracy when compared to noncontingent access to that activity for 3 students. For 1 student, noncontingent access to the preferred activity led to improved response accuracy, and 1 student’s analysis suggested the importance of procedural variety. The implications of these findings for use of preference assessments to devise instructional sequences that improve student responding are discussed.