Kelli Dawn Cummings

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Verified

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• Ph.D.
• Professor (Associate) at University of Maryland, College Park

Response to Intervention (RtI) is a popular phrase at conferences, in K-12 settings and in university classrooms. It is clear that the approach is gaining in popularity to improve the outcomes of students, but there are several questions that still need to be answered about how to implement such a model. One big question is "How might the roles and...

Universal screening is a critical component of school-based prevention systems. Screening data enable educators to target students for supplemental intervention, align resources to meet needs, and identify students who may be at risk for learning disabilities. One major requirement of the screening process is that all students are included to gain...

Informal reading inventories (IRI) and curriculum-based measures of reading (CBM-R) have continued importance in instructional planning, but raters have exhibited difficulty in accurately identifying students’ miscues. To identify and tabulate scorers’ mismarkings, this study employed examiners and raters who scored 15,051 words from 108 passage re...

Abstract Although curriculum based measures of oral reading (CBM-R) have strong technical adequacy, there is still a reason to believe that student performance may be influenced by factors of the testing situation, such as errors examiners make in administering and scoring the test. This study examined the construct-irrelevant variance introduced b...

We present a method for data-based decision making at the school level using student achievement data. We demonstrate the potential of a national assessment database [i.e., the University of Oregon DIBELS Data System (DDS)] to provide comparative levels of school-level data on average student achievement gains. Through the DDS as a data source, and...

Theory of Mind (ToM) is a skill of social cognition recently of interest to literacy researchers. This article presents initial findings from a pilot study investigating the use of ToM to teach theme identification and theme statement formation to beginning readers who are less skilled in comprehension. The authors designed a brief, 1:1 listening c...

The purpose of this study was to examine the diagnostic accuracy of English and Spanish language screeners when predicting reading comprehension outcomes in both languages at the end of Grade 1 and Grade 2. Participants were 1221 Latino/a bilingual students in Grade 1 and 1004 in Grade 2 who were attending bilingual programs in the Pacific Northwes...

The literature reports mixed findings on whether measuring individual change over time on an interim progress monitoring assessment adds value to understanding student differences in future performance on an assessment. This study examines the relations among descriptive measures of growth (simple difference and average difference) and inferential...

Fluency represents the learned ability to respond quickly, effortlessly, and accurately to a given stimuli. The fluent application of a skill, however, requires frequent practice on all relevant subskills, and it requires deliberate practice, not simply the repetition of subskills that are already fluent. Dancers, for example, learn best through ma...

This book represents the collective work of approximately 18 research groups actively engaged in fluency-based curriculum-based measurement (CBM) work across the country and internationally. Its release coincides with two recent journal special issues on the topic of fluency-based measurement technology (Cummings & Biancarosa, 2015; Petscher, Cummi...

This paper aims to translate for practitioners the principles and methods for evaluating screening measures in education, including benchmark goals and cut points, from our technical manuscript “Evaluation of Diagnostic Systems: The Selection of Students at Risk of Academic Difficulties” (this issue). We offer a brief description of procedures deve...

Diagnostic tools can help schools more consistently and fairly match instructional resources to the needs of their students. To ensure the best educational outcome for each child, diagnostic decision-making systems seek to balance time, clarity, and accuracy. However, recent research notes that many educational decisions tend to be made using profe...

Research Findings: The goal of the present study was to provide empirical evidence for the importance of mastering reading fluency in early schooling. Study participants were 1,322 students in 3rd grade in 42 schools in a northwestern state. These students were assessed using a battery of reading skill tests as well as comprehensive tests of more g...

This comprehensive evaluation of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills Sixth Edition (DIBELS6) set of measures gives a practical illustration of signal detection methods, the methods used to determine the value of screening and diagnostic systems, and offers an updated set of cut scores (decision thresholds). Data were drawn from a...

The primary objective of this special issue is to synthesize results from recent reading fluency research endeavors, and to link these findings to practical uses of reading curriculum-based measurement (R-CBM) tools. Taken together, the manuscripts presented in this issue discuss measurement work related to new metrics of indexing student reading p...

Recent studies indicate that examiners make a number of intentional and unintentional errors when administering reading assessments to students. Because these errors introduce construct-irrelevant variance in scores, the fidelity of test administrations could influence the results of evaluation studies. To determine how assessment fidelity is being...

The Council for Learning Disabilities’ Research Committee hosted a “Must Read” session at the 35th Annual International Conference in which they discussed influential articles published between August 1, 2012, and July 31, 2013. Articles were selected in six areas relevant to learning disabilities research and practice: response to intervention, re...

The purpose of this research brief is to present results from a study investigating the relation between word reading fluency (both initial level and fall–winter gain scores), passage reading fluency, and reading comprehension. Word reading fluency data were collected in the fall and winter; outcome measures were administered in the spring of Grade...

We examined the extent to which variance in student CBM-R scores was attributable to examiners, as opposed to passages, students, or schools. We also evaluated whether effects were moderated by grade or English Learner status. Results indicate that as much as 16% of student CBM-R score variance was between examiners.

The members of the Council for Learning Disabilities’ Research Committee convene annually to discuss what they have identified as “Must Read” articles published within the last year. For the 34th Annual International Conference, the members were asked to select articles that exemplified the conference theme: Learning Disabilities: Looking Back and...

Measures of oral reading fluency (ORF) are perhaps the most often used assessment to monitor student progress as part of a response to intervention (RTI) model. Rates of growth in research and aim lines in practice are used to characterize student growth; in either case, growth is generally defined as linear, increasing at a constant rate. Recent r...

In this presentation I describe passage effects on a set of Oral Reading Fluency progress-monitoring measures for students in Grades 1 - 6. Results focus on the persistence of form effects in spite of a priori criteria used in passage development. The author describes the utility of three types of equating methods in ameliorating these effects. Con...

The purpose of this article is to provide a commentary on the current state of several measurement issues pertaining to curriculum-based measures of reading (R-CBM1). We begin by providing an overview of the utility of R-CBM, followed by a presentation of five specific measurements considerations: (a) the reliability of R-CBM oral reading fluency (...

This chapter focuses on three key principles of General Outcome Measurement and data-based decision making that have guided and provided energy for much of the work in early literacy: targeting assessment on indicators of basic skills; focusing on student outcomes; and combining assessment with targeted interventions in a data-based decision making...

The purpose of this article is to describe passage effects on Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills–Next Edition Oral Reading Fluency (DIBELS Next ORF) progress-monitoring measures for Grades 1 through 6. Approximately 572 students per grade (total N with at least one data point = 3,092) read all three DIBELS Next winter benchmark passa...

The purpose of this article is to describe the relationship of initial skill and rate of progress on a measure of the alphabetic principle, Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF), to first-grade reading outcomes as measured by Oral Reading Fluency (ORF). In addition, we describe a scoring approach to NWF where the predominant decoding strategy (i.e., sound-by...

The purpose of this study was to document the relationship between two commonly-used indicators of reading proficiency (i,e,, Oral Reading Fluency [ORF] and Retell Fluency [RTF]) and two reading outcome tests in the state of Montana, Third and fourth grade students were assessed over 1 school year (2005-2006), Each student was assessed at three tim...

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate one way that schools can engage in system-level, formative evaluation. We will provide initial, normative estimates of school-level means and variability for 2nd grade Oral Reading Fluency (ORF). Results will be presented at the school level, using a percentile band plot. We will illustrate how a school co...

The purpose of this article is to describe the relationship of initial skill and rate of progress on a measure of the alphabetic principle, Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF), to first-grade reading outcomes as measured by Oral Reading Fluency (ORF). In addition, we describe a scoring approach to NWF where the predominant decoding strategy (i.e., sound-by...

This article presents initial findings from a study examining First Sound Fluency (FSF), which is a brief measure of early phonemic awareness (PA) skills. Students in prekindergarten and kindergarten (preK and K) were assessed three times (fall, winter, and spring) over one school year, which resulted in multiple reliability and validity coefficien...

This study describes the initial validation of an innovative social--behavioral observational assessment tool that is designed to be used on a repeated basis to assess growth and development of social competence over time to: (a) identify the social functioning of all students, (b) assist in planning support for students at risk, and (c) evaluate t...

ynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) comprise a set of procedures and measures for assessing the acquisition of early lit- eracy and reading skills from kindergarten through sixth grade. Although DIBELS were designed as a formative assessment and evaluation tool to be used for low-stakes educational decisions, DIBELS have most...

THE IMPORTANCE OF ACCOUNTABILITY IN EDUCATION IS GREATER NOW THAN PERHAPS AT any other time in history. Under the mandates of NCLB, IDEA, and other recent federal legislation, schools must demonstrate that students with and without disabilities are accessing and benefiting from the adopted curricula. Although such requirements will ultimately be a...

Foster, adoptive, and kinship parents urgently need high quality in-service training to help them better understand and deal with serious behavior problems of children in their care. Parents are increasingly turning to the Internet for information, advice, support, and now, for formal training. Breakthroughs in technology have made the Web more acc...

This lecture will present findings from a brief longitudinal study examining the reliability and validity of a measure of social behavior. Results indicate that scores on this measure are stable, and tap constructs similar to those assessed via more traditional measures, such as rating scales. Recommendations for school-wide implementation, and use...

Foster Parent College was recently developed through Northwest Media, Inc. as an interactive multimedia training venue for foster parents. Users can take brief parenting courses, either online (http://www.FosterParentCollege.com) or on DVD, on a variety of topics dealing with serious child behavior problems. Currently, these problems include eating...

Most teens leaving the care of an agency are woefully unprepared and unsupported. Current approaches to aftercare are expensive and difficult to implement. This study evaluated a prototype version of Vstreet.com, an innovative website for at-risk youth designed to teach lifeskills and build community. Findings from a sample of youth in the Job Corp...

As educators increasingly are held responsible for student achievement, school personnel struggle to find ways to effectively document student responsiveness to interventions and track progress toward important outcomes. While many educators focus on high-stakes tests as a means of documenting student achievement of important outcomes, other assess...