easyCBM™

The need that gave rise to this innovation involved the inability of school districts to stay within compliance with federal regulations governing students that were identified to have learning disabilities.

The problem was that without this innovation, the burden of the problem was the responsibility of the teachers within the school in terms of identification, monitoring, assessments, and charting growth.

In addition, a monitoring system that was aligned to the Response to Intervention (RTI) model was needed because it is the standard multi-level prevention system used to assist in the education of students.

Dr. Gerald Tindal and Dr. Julie Alonzo were the “lead thinkers” in the creation of this innovation while serving as researchers at the University of Oregon.

As part of a  three model implementation plan (designing, testing, and revisiting student assessment) , the College of Education for the school was partnered the authors to research websites that were currently available to district seeking assistance in the area of RTI interventions with material, resources, and housing of data.

Although there were not any problems discovered to arise in the development process, increased interest from teachers and administrators led to the development of the innovation being taken to an additional level.

The program started out as a K-3 Reading Curriculum assessment, and then evolved to become a K-8 Reading, and afterward through additional funding incorporated K-8 Mathematics.

The intended audience of easyCBM is K-12 schools and school districts as a whole, especially Special Education coordinators.

The commercialization process began with the University of Oregon College of Education’s Behavioral Research and Testing (BRT) group.

Once completed, the group partnered with Riverside, a subsidiary of the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Education Group (HMH) to distribute the primary program to the public while the BRT maintain control of easyCBMLite,the teacher’s version(www.easyCBM.com, 2014).

2006—Funding for the program supplied by the Model Demonstration Centers on Progress Monitoring, U.S. Department of Education

2009—First line of product made available to school districts in the state of Oregon for research.

2010—First sales made to 18 additional school districts in nine states.

2010—Program extended to include K-8 Reading 2011—Focus group created to sample the new

program where K-8 Mathematics and Reading were tested

2012—Partnership with HMH’s Riverside Publishing with for distributions and sales, original group maintain maintenance and further development

The key change agents in the K12 structure would include the Curriculum Coordinator, Principals, Special Education Coordinator, and Literacy/Mathematics Coach.

The innovators and early adopters in our school would be Curriculum Coordinator and Literacy/Mathematic Coach. The best strategy for persuading them to adopt the easyCBM program would be the demonstration method to began and the data analysis afterward.

The possible laggards in the innovation process would be those seasoned teachers that feel that their schedules are already full and view this product as just another “here today, gone tomorrow” situation.

Another possible set of laggards would be the teachers of non-tested areas such as Social Studies, Physical Education, and Computer Technology teachers because the district would use these classes to pull students from in the testing process.

One possible strategy for moving the laggards towards adoption would be peer-pressure from the other teachers within the school.

Another possible strategy would be policy set by the administrators and explained to the staff as to the benefits of having students complete the program, even if it means adding an additional class period to the day and name it learning strategies. 

Compatibility Compatibility of an innovation involves the

degree to which the potential adopters view the product in reference to existing values, past experiences, and current needs (Rogers, 2003).

Trialibility Trialability is defined as the degree to which

the innovation can be practiced with on a limited basis (Rogers, 2003).

The hybrid approach would work best for the adoption of easyCBM in the school district.

The centralized approach would target the state department of education.

The decentralized approach would be used for the targeting the individual school districts, administrators, and teachers.

Rogers (2003) defines critical mass as the point when enough individuals have adopted the innovation and it becomes self-sustainable.

With this innovation having not met critical mass, the strategy three will be recommended to the Board of Trustees.

Critical Mass Strategy 3 easyCBM will be introduced to the Special

Education coordinator and the Teacher Support Team first because they interact with strategies recommended for RTI on a daily basis.

Next, the teachers of tested area will be introduced to the innovation to show how data can be housed, tracked, and disaggregated to help create data driven decisions when instructing and tutoring.