Running Head: WEEK 2 DISCUSSION 1

Discussion 2

Student Name: Chegretta Williams

Week 2: Discussion

Course: ESE 0630 – Educational and Psychological Assessment of Exceptional Students

Institute: Nova Southeastern University

WEEK 2 DISCUSSION 2

Discussion 2

Curriculum Based Measurement

Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) is a method teachers use to find out how

students are progressing in basic academic areas such as math, reading, writing, and spelling.

When child's teacher uses CBM, he or she finds out how well child is progressing in learning the

content for the academic year. The major characteristics include:

 Representation of an academic performance goal for the school year and child's progress

each time the measurements are taken.

 CBM graphs can help create a common understanding among parents, teachers,

administrators, and other professionals (such as school psychologists).

 If child receives special education services, CBM graphs can increase productive

communication at Individualized Education Plan (IEP) meetings about the child's current

performance level. They can also be useful in developing better goals and objectives for

the IEP.

 CBM graphs can provide solid information that can easily be shared with new teachers

and administrators. CBM graphs can be used at conferences with teachers and

administrators to improve communications and to support concerns and questions.

 The scores for the measurements (for example, the number of words correctly and

incorrectly pronounced in a one-minute reading) are easy to understand and do not have

to be interpreted, in contrast with typical standardized test scores.

 CBM evaluates the success of the instruction the child is receiving.

 CBM can be used as a screening test to identify students at risk of failing, whether or not

the child currently receives special education services (Van Norman, 2016).
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Types of CBM and its Uses

There are three different types of CBM procedures: general outcomes measures, skills-

based measures and mastery measures. General Outcome Measures (GOMs) make important

statements about students' reading, spelling, written expression, and mathematics computation

skills. Skills-Based Measurements (SBMs) is a very adequate way to determine if students are

not matriculating as they should academically, or if they are at risk of academic failure. It also

helps in determining if student instruction should be modified. A mastery measure is an

invaluable tool for monitoring progress because it can directly identify what skills a student is

missing, allowing for timely instructional adjustments on the part of the educator (Hosp, Hosp &

Howell, 2016).

Resources Used for Data Collection and Analysis in Classroom

Data can be collected through formative assessments (short quizzes, question and answer

drills), observations (observe behaviors while interacting with the student when they are working

on assignments by themselves or on a group assignment), standardized tests, key milestone

exams and project work (summative data is collected from the examinations given at the end of

unit or the end of year) and student files (student records provide useful information). The

management of data collected through these resources depends on the needs assessment of

students. For example, immigrant students who need to learn English as a second language,

students with disabilities who need accommodations and students with poor literacy skills who

need special services. The collected data is then analyzed through Microsoft Excel, visual format

(images, charts and graphs) and Flubaroo (a Google Spreadsheets Add-on) that helps educators

quickly grade and analyze online assignments and assessments, as well as share scores with

students (Matsumoto & Dobs, 2017).

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Cultural Background Determining Language Expectations

Culture influences the language that is spoken within its constraints as a society, such as

how certain words are used in support of the culture. Culture develops its own language and has

nuances accompanied by forms of group body language and voice inflections. A student's

personality and cultural factors may also influence the development of language proficiency. For

example, a student's cultural background may influence the student's preferred process for

learning and how the student interacts with the teacher and peers in a classroom setting. Learners

from different cultures can have different views on classroom behavior, such as student-teacher

interaction, as well as different views on the value of education. Understanding culture helps in

knowing right meaning to each word, in the larger context, because students will be able to think

in the foreign language. Culture is essential when studying languages. Numerous cultural forces

connect to children's school experiences and academic achievement. These include parental

beliefs, socialization practices, and cultural worldviews. Cultural values, practices, and ways of

learning at home both shape and connect to children's formal school experiences (Chun, Kern &

Smith, 2016).

Impact of Acculturation on Intelligence Test Performance

Individuals from high-context cultures are more likely to have higher levels of

intelligence because cultural intelligence requires understanding the context of the situation;

therefore, those from high-context cultures will be more able to read the cues, than those from

low-context cultures. Social and eco-cultural elements greatly affect intelligence. People who are

met with challenges that increase the need to use brain power may have a greater measured

intelligence. Whereas people who are stressed because of the nature of their environment score

worse on intelligence measures. For example, people from different cultures use their brains
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differently to solve the same visual perceptual tasks. Behavioral studies have shown that these

cultural differences can influence memory and even perception. Intelligence tests contain cultural

bias—they contain a strong bias that is in favor of White, middle class groups (Tan, Burgess &

Green, 2021).

Effectiveness of Testing Programs

The interview revealed that the testing programs could be made effective by selecting

appropriate item types for objectives, highlighting the alignment of the exam with the course

objectives, writing instructions that are unambiguous, explicit and clear, writing instructions that

preview the exam, asking questions simple and clearly, considering the time that the students

will take to complete the test, considering the point value of different question types and thinking

ahead about the scoring process. For program evaluation, the parameters, needs, components,

and outcomes of program design with an eye towards improving student learning is observed. It

involves a complex approach, taking into consideration needs assessment, curriculum mapping,

and various models of program review. The program evaluation is based on the establishment of

baseline data, identification of the expected outcomes, implementation of pre and posttests in

order to compare the baseline performance and to analyze whether the expected outcomes are

achieved or not. The challenges that were faced during the program evaluation were due to poor

skills related to the use of technology for analysis of collected data/assessment and sometimes

complicated questions or unclear instructions can affect the testing scores.

Theoretical Contributions to the Development of Intelligence Tests

The modern study of intelligence is often dated back to the work of Charles Spearman,

who scientifically studied intelligence and proposed that it could be understood in terms of a

general ability that pervaded all intellectual tasks, and specific abilities that were unique to each
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particular intellectual task. Modern testing of intelligence, however, dates back to the work of

Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon, who proposed the forerunner of the modern Stanford-Binet

Intelligence Scales. The work of Binet and Simon was brought to the United States by Lewis

Terman from Stanford University, who devised the Stanford-Binet Scales. Another critical figure

in the early testing of intelligence was David Wechsler, whose Wechsler Scales of Intelligence

are today the most widely used in the world. Wechsler's original scale differed from Binet's in

that, in addition to an overall intelligence quotient (IQ), it also yielded separate scores for verbal

and performance measures of intelligence. Binet and Wechsler succeeded in their measurements

because they viewed intelligence as based in judgment and good sense. However, before them,

Francis Galton constructed tests of intelligence based on acuity of sensorimotor processing, such

as visual, auditory, and tactile skills. Although Galton is often credited as being the first to take a

scientific approach to intelligence, his sensorimotor tests did not prove to be very predictive of

scholastic performance or other kinds of meaningful cognitive performances (Eling, 2019).

Assessment of Oral Reading, Word Attack, Reading Recognition and Comprehension

Skills

The responses of a reading specialist indicated that for oral reading they assess the oral

vocabulary (understating meaningful word parts), background knowledge, syntactic

comprehension and pragmatic language (use of language in social context along with the

understating of idioms and sarcasm). For word recognition they assess phonological and

phonemic awareness, phonic skills (knowledge about sounds and decoding the unfamiliar

words), automaticity of word recognition and reading of common phonetically irregular words.

For reading comprehension and recognition skills at third grade level they assess the

foundational reading skills, literature reading and information reading. The foundation reading
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skills include phonics and word recognition and fluency. The literature reading assessment

indicates the abilities of students to recount stories, determine lessons and conveying those

lessons by extracting key details from the stories. For informational reading the students should

be able to describe relationship between series of historical events, scientific concepts, steps of a

technical procedure and using language that pertains to time sequence and cause/effect.
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References

Chun, D., Kern, R., & Smith, B. (2016). Technology in language use, language teaching, and

language learning. The Modern Language Journal, 100(S1), 64-80.

Eling, P. (2019). History of neuropsychological assessment. A history of neuropsychology, 44,

164-178.

Hosp, M. K., Hosp, J. L., & Howell, K. W. (2016). The ABCs of CBM: A practical guide to

curriculum-based measurement. Guilford Publications.

Matsumoto, Y., & Dobs, A. M. (2017). Pedagogical gestures as interactional resources for

teaching and learning tense and aspect in the ESL grammar classroom. Language

Learning, 67(1), 7-42.

Tan, Y. W., Burgess, G. H., & Green, R. J. (2021). The effects of acculturation on

neuropsychological test performance: A systematic literature review. The Clinical

Neuropsychologist, 35(3), 541-571.

Van Norman, E. R. (2016). Curriculum-based measurement of oral reading: A preliminary

investigation of confidence interval overlap to detect reliable growth. School Psychology

Quarterly, 31(3), 405.