The Fluency Construct

This book provides a comprehensive overview of fluency as a construct and its assessment in the context of curriculum-based measurement (CBM). Comparing perspectives from language acquisition, reading, and mathematics, the book parses the vagueness and complexities surrounding fluency concepts and their resulting impact on testing, intervention, and students' educational development. Applications of this knowledge in screening and testing, ideas for creating more targeted measures, and advanced methods for studying fluency data demonstrate the overall salience of fluency within CBM. Throughout, contributors argue for greater specificity and nuance in isolating skills to be measured and improved, and for terminology that reflects those educational benchmarks.

Included in the coverage:

• Indicators of fluent writing in beginning writers.
• Fluency in language acquisition, reading, and mathematics.
• Foundations of fluency-based assessments in behavioral and psychometric paradigms.
• Using response time and accuracy data to inform the measurement of fluency.
• Using individual growth curves to model reading fluency.
• Latent class analysis for reading fluency research.

The Fluency Construct: Curriculum-Based Measurement Concepts and Applications is an essential resource for researchers, graduate students, and professionals in clinical child and school psychology, language and literature, applied linguistics, special education, neuropsychology, and social work.

Kelli D. Cummings, Ph.D., NCSP, is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on projects that link assessment and intervention technologies to improve student success. She has worked as a special education teacher, a school psychologist and a trainer of school psychologists; she brings these practical experiences to her work in the research community. Dr. Cummings has provided formal technical assistance and training on Problem-Solving, Response-to-Intervention and the use of Curriculum-Based Measurement for data-based decision making in schools throughout the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain. Her work is published regularly in school psychology and education journals.

Yaacov Petscher, Ph.D., is the Director of Research at the Florida Center for Reading Research at Florida State University. His research interests are in the areas of computer adaptive assessments, the study of individual differences in reading, psychometrics and applied research methods in education. Dr. Petscher recently edited Applied Quantitative Analysis in Education and the Social Sciences and regularly publishes in education, psychology and measurement journals as well as technical reports for the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance via the Regional Educational Laboratory - Southeast.