Approve the Agreement for Technical Services with Dr. Kenneth Howell for the Training of Psychological Services Staff on Curriculum Based Evaluation of the Five Areas of Reading (Student Services and Federal Programs)

Psychological Services has initiated a training plan that addresses both mental health counseling and reading assessment and intervention. Dr. Howell, from Western Washington University, has developed an in-depth training that addresses a systematic approach to breaking down and analyzing the five components of reading as well as the development and implementation of evidence-based interventions to increase reading skills. Dr. Howell will be responsible for training 20 school psychologists who will subsequently train the remainder of Psychological Services staff on Curriculum Based Evaluation. The impact of this training will be greatly seen in the intervention process utilized by schools who are working to remediate students who are struggling in reading, by employing a more systematic approach to reading problem identification and subsequent intervention.

Goal 1 - The percentage of students scoring at Level 3 or higher on FCAT reading will increase a minimum of 5 percentage points.

The $5,940 for this Agreement for Technical Services is funded by Staff Development Categorical state funds.

Aggregate the data provided by the participants for visual analysis and interpretation. Through the use of control sites, conduct repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) to determine if sites using CBE strategies show a significant increase in reading scores and decrease in behavioral referrals and absences over time when compared to sites not using these strategies.