Effects of Progress Monitoring Supported by National Web-based Technology on the Intervention Results of Infants and Toddlers with/without Disabilities

Abstract

With the 2002 report of the President’s Commission on Excellence in Special Education, the field entered a new era of accountability for results. From the child, to the program, to the State and Federal levels, mandates now require providers to report results and to use results in deciding when and how to improve effectiveness based on data aggregated up from individual children. Under IDEA 2004, OSEP requires that states report child outcomes of their Part C and Part B (619) programs annually. States must file their first plan for doing so by December 2, 2005, with initial state data to be reported to OSEP by June 2006, and annually thereafter. Least prepared to report these results are Part C programs for infants and toddlers due to the current state of available measurement science, workforce capacity, and technical data infrastructure.

Throughout the course of several completed projects, including a Phase 1 (Development) Steppingstones Project (H327A040004), the authors of this application have developed and published (a) a set of technically adequate measures for infants and toddlers, birth to age 3 designed to measure individual children’s progress over time, and (b) a national website technology capable of supporting access, use, and data infrastructure (management, entry, reporting) services at scale. At this time, measurement has been demonstrated technically adequate and the website innovations have been demonstrated in formative evaluations and field piloting to be suitable (usable and feasible) for a field-based evaluation of effectiveness in improving results for infants and toddlers with disabilities.

Progress monitoring is a science-based practice used to evaluate individual child progress. Compared to the field of early childhood special education, K-12 special and general education have an extensive history using progress monitoring. Recent downward extensions have been made to children 3-5 (http://ggg.umn.edu), and in the applicant’s work, infants and toddlers (IGDI-IT: http://www.igdi,ku.edu). A major finding from K-12 research and impetus for OSEP’s recent efforts to scale up this technology by funding large, national Progress Monitoring Centers and Institutes, is evidence that progress monitoring leads to better and stronger interventions for individual children, leading to better child outcomes, compared to children whose teachers/caregivers do not use such approaches (e.g., Fuchs & Fuchs, 1998). For example, K-5 teachers using progress monitoring made more frequent changes in the instructional interventions, more adaptations for individual students with LD, and greater individualization. Similar knowledge based on progress monitoring in the care and treatment of infants and toddlers with disabilities does not yet exist. Using the technology innovation developed and evaluated through Phase 1 (IGDI-IT) and related work past and present, the aim of this application is to test the hypothesis that systematic use of progress monitoring to identify when a child is not responding to an intervention and to guide early intervention will accelerate outcomes with infants and toddlers.