Math skills are essential to daily life, impacting a person?s ability to function at home, work, and in the community. Although reading has been the focus in recent years, many students struggle in math. The inability to master math calculation and problem solving has contributed to the rising incidence of student failure, referrals for special education evaluations, and dropout rates. Studies have shown that curriculum based measurement (CBM) is a well-established tool for formative assessment, and could potentially be used for other purposes such as a prediction of state standards test scores, however to date there are limited validity studies between mathematics CBM and standard-based assessment. This research examined a brief assessment that reported to be aligned to national curriculum standards in order to predict student performance on state standards-based mathematics curriculum, identify students at-risk of failure, and plan instruction. Evidence was gathered on the System to Enhance Educational Performance Grade 3 Focal Mathematics Assessment Instrument (STEEP3M) as a formative, universal screener. Using a sample of 337 students and 22 instructional staff, four qualities of the STEEP3M were examined: a) internal consistency and criterion related validity (concurrent); b) screening students for a multi-tiered decision-making process; c) utility for instructional planning and intervention recommendations; and d) efficiency of administration, scoring, and reporting results which were the basis of the four research questions for this study. Several optimized solutions were generated from Receiver Operator Curve (ROC) statistical analysis; however none demonstrated that the STEEP3M maximized either sensitivity or specificity. In semi-structured interviews teachers reported that they would consider using the STEEP3M, however only as a part of a decision-making rubric along with other measures. Further, teachers indicated that lessons are developed before the school year starts, more in response to the sequence of the state standards than to students? needs. While the STEEP3M was sufficiently long enough for high-stakes or criterion-referenced decisions, this study found that the test does not provide sufficient diagnostic information for multi-tiered decision-making for intervention or instructional planning. Although practical and efficient to administer, the conclusions of this study show the test does not provide sufficient information on the content domain and does not accurately classify students in need of assistance.

Educators are challenged with meeting the academic needs of students, particularly in the subject area of reading. School districts purchase tools such as Achieve3000 to help students improve their proficiency in reading; however, implementation of such interventions has not been explored from the educators' perspective. This study explored 3rd grade reading teachers' views on Achieve3000 as a tool for improving reading proficiency and preparedness for the Florida State Standards English Language Arts assessment. The conceptual framework included the theory of social validity and current research as it related to differentiated instruction. This study utilized a basic qualitative approach to answer these key research questions. The participants included 6 3rd grade reading teachers from 3 Florida schools. Individual face-to-face interviews and a focus group interview session were conducted to answer the research questions. Data were analyzed via open, axial, and selective coding to generate the themes. The findings revealed the 3rd grade reading teachers believed that Achieve3000 can be considered a reliable method for improving reading and preparing students for the reading portion of the Florida Standards Assessment. The findings of this study can positively affect social change by providing educators with an increased repertoire of instructional tools to assist them in meeting the needs of all learners, as well as to prepare students for a technology driven world.

Submitted by Irene Nascimento (irene.kessia@ufpe.br) on 2016-08-22T18:54:13Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) DissertacaoCD_LuizFelipeLiborio.pdf: 3777707 bytes, checksum: a7937e9fc359d5b560c37ea3abf5e74c (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-22T18:54:13Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) DissertacaoCD_LuizFelipeLiborio.pdf: 3777707 bytes, checksum: a7937e9fc359d5b560c37ea3abf5e74c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-08-27 / Capes / Atualmente, é cada vez mais exigido como critério competitivo a aderência do processo de software de uma organização a um modelo ou norma de qualidade. Alcançar altos níveis de aderência é uma tarefa complexa para as organizações, pois a atividade de avaliar essa aderência exige cuidado ao ser realizada. Com isso, busca-se cada vez mais o apoio de ferramentas de avaliação computadorizadas, cujo objetivo é agilizar e tornar mais confiável o processo de avaliação dos processos de software. Ainda assim, um dos fatores que tendem a dificultar a utilização e propagação do uso de ferramentas é a atualização das normas de qualidade e dos métodos de avaliação associados, que visam se adequar constantemente às boas práticas do mercado. Ora, se uma ferramenta é criada baseada na norma de qualidade e no seu método de avaliação, qualquer mudança em algum dos dois componentes significa mudanças na ferramenta, gerando custos de manutenção e de distribuição da nova versão da ferramenta. Este trabalho busca criar uma engine de geração que seja sensível a esses mudanças, sem que seu processo de desenvolvimento necessite ser executado novamente. Para isto, utiliza o processo MDD (Model-Driven Development) para atender a esses requisitos, dado que o seu objetivo é transformar elementos mais abstratos em elementos mais concretos utilizando uma sucessão de transformações, através de modelos. O objetivo deste trabalho é, então, aplicar as regras de MDD aos modelos de qualidade e métodos de avaliação. Isto torna possível a criação de ferramentas para avaliação baseada nos modelos necessários à avaliação. Ou seja, através de um modelo de processo e de um metamodelo da norma de qualidade, além do método de avaliação, é possível criar de forma automática via MDD uma ferramenta que possa ser atualizada sob demanda, sem que seu código-fonte precise ser alterado manualmente. / Nowadays, it is increasingly required as a competitive criteria the adherence of an organization to a software model or quality standard process. Achieving high levels of adherence is a complex task for organizations, because the activity of evaluating this adherence requires care to be performed. Thus, it is increasing the nedd of computerized evaluation tools whose goal is to speed up and make more reliable the process of evaluating software processes.Still, one of the factors that tend to hamper the use and propagation of tool use is the change of the quality standards and assessment methods, which aim to adapt constantly to best practices in the market. So, if a tool is created based on quality standard and its evaluation method, any change in any of the two components mean changes in the tool, generating costs of maintaining and distributing the new version of the tool. This work seeks to develop a tool that is sensitive to that changes, but without the need of performing its development process again. For that, it uses MDD (Model- Driven Development) processes meet these requirements, since their goal is to transform more abstract elements into more concrete elements using a succession of transformations, through models. So, the goal of this work is to apply the rules of MDD to quality models and assessment methods. It makes possible to create tools based on models. In other words, through a process model and a metamodel quality standard, besides the evaluation method, it is possible to create automatically via MDD a tool that can be updated on demand, without its source code need to be changed manually.