Project EASS-E: Expanding Approaches to School Screening With Equity

The purpose of the project is for researchers to develop and establish initial psychometric evidence for a school-based screening instrument designed to assess both child- and environmentally-focused indicators: the Comprehensive and Contextual Child Screener in Schools (C3SS). Screening assessments serve as a primary data driver in multi-tiered systems of support as data are provided to efficiently and effectively deliver information needed to direct supports. Psychometrically-sound screening assessments for social, emotional, and behavioral (SEB) domains have proliferated over the past two decades; however, the promise of these screeners has yet to be fully realized for multiple reasons. First, uptake of SEB screeners has not been widespread, with resource demands and capacity for data use as primary barriers. Second, although the rise in available SEB screening tools is promising, concerns about the narrow focus and potential rater bias of these screeners have been raised. That is, the vast majority of SEB screening tools are comprised of items that reinforce a child deficit view. A within-child perspective that does not also attend to contextual factors is problematic for many reasons, particularly with regard to its potential contribution to reinforcing bias and ultimately disproportionality. Equitable SEB screening must incorporate data collectionthat can efficiently screen across multiple independent risk factors and data usethat incorporates contextually relevant information and addresses personal biases. In sum, SEB screening assessments offer critical information within integrated multi-tiered systems of support, but current iterations are inadequate at providing contextualized information about the whole child.