Development of Dynamic Assessment

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Children's Progress, Inc. seeks to develop its on-line dynamic assessment and sensory screening apparatus. The assessment's patented approach presents questions in language arts and mathematics to children in Pre-kindergarten through Second Grade. After correct responses, the assessment moves onto more difficult content; after incorrect responses the assessment represents questions and/or provides hints to scaffold the child. The assessment is designed to identify a child's zone of proximal development of a host of concepts and skills. In addition, the assessment is unique in that it also screens for any potential deficits in vision (color vision, visual acuity) and hearing. Children's Progress, in collaboration with researchers at MIT, have developed new technologies to screen for sensory problems over uncontrolled channels, i.e., the Internet. Moreover, the assessment's innovative reporting mechanism provides teachers and administrators with narrative reports that identify areas of strength and weaknesses and recommended activities, allowing the teacher to target instruction and intervention. The assessment also provides progress reports about an individual child's learning across an academic school year. Children's Progress believes that its technologies have the potential to provide educators with a comprehensive suite of assessment tools never before available at a time when the importance of child-oriented assessment is proving to be critical to ensuring children's academic progress and success. We seek support for the completion of product development for our psychophysics (hearing and vision) assessment and for our language arts and mathematics evaluations.