Abstract

For the past 30 years, school-based practitioners or psychometricians have emphasized the use of standardized, norm-referenced assessment tools, such as intelligence tests, academic achievement tests, and self-report or rating scales to evaluate youth referred for academic difficulties (Curtis, Hunley, & Grier, 2002; Goh, Teslow, & Fuller, 1981; Hutton, Dubes, & Muir, 1992). Information garnered from these assessment tools has traditionally been used to determine student eligibility for special education and related services. However, as the field of school psychology continues to shift from a refer-test-place service delivery model to a data-based, problem-solving approach, practitioners have increasingly deemphasized the use of global, trait-like measures in favor of ecologically-sensitive or context-specific measurement tools (Noell & Gansle, 2009; Reschly, 2008; Shinn, 2002). These more dynamic assessment approaches, which include curriculum-based measurement and functional behavior analysis, have been lauded by both researchers and practitioners, because they generate information about fine-grained behaviors and skills that can be used to develop individualized interventions for youth who struggle in school (Noell & Gansle, 2009; Stage et al., 2008).