Proposals submitted to address the Measurement goal are designed to
- develop and validate new assessments,
- validate existing assessments,
- adapt and validate assessments originally designed and used for research purposes for broader use in instructional settings,
- develop and test new techniques for assessment or analysis of assessment data in the context of state accountability standards and systems, and
- develop assessments used to certify or assess education professionals (e.g., teachers, education leaders, related service providers) and validate these assessments or existing assessments against student outcomes.
Significance: Applicants address the significance of their proposal by (i) posing clear aims for the project, (ii) clearly describing the theoretical and empirical rationale for the proposed assessment, (iii) describing the components of the assessment, and (iv) providing a compelling rationale justifying the importance of the proposed research, which may include input from education stakeholders such as practitioners and policymakers.
Awards: Typical awards for Measurement projects are $150,000 to $300,000 (total cost = direct + indirect costs) per year for up to 4 years. The maximum duration of the award is 4 years and the maximum award for a 4-year project is $1,600,000 (total cost). The size of the award depends on the scope of the project.
Examples of funded research
Measuring Early Communication Development in Children with ASD
The purpose of this study is to modify and validate an existing assessment, theCommunication Complexity Scale (CCS), so that it reflects current communication abilities in school-age children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and minimal verbal skills, is reliable and valid for measuring outcomes and educational progress, can be learned by teachers and related service personnel within a feasible time period, and is affordable to use. The CCS has been developed and assessed with promising results but requires modification for live-scoring during naturally occurring communication in classroom contexts to provide ongoing progress and outcome data more efficiently than the original tool. These enhancements to the CCS would enable school personnel to have a reliable and valid means of evaluating communication progress and outcomes for students with ASD (ages 3–18 years) who are minimally verbal.