About the Academic Well-Check Program

The AWCP is a partnership between the Institute for Child Study (ICS) of Indiana University and four schools (three elementary and one middle school) in a local school district. It is based on a Response to Intervention (RTI) framework and operates within a two-tier model spotlighting universal screening and the delivery of small remedial interventions. The AWCP’s core activity is to benchmark or screen the population of students at the four partner schools three times a year. Specifically, graduate students in the AWCP conduct mini-academic “well checks” using curriculum-based measurement technology. Then advanced graduate students plan and implement data-driven, research-based academic interventions. The AWCP is very timely considering the emphasis research, policy, and federal law is placing on the prevention and remediation of learning problems before it is too late.

Prior to the fall of 2004, the ICS operated as a conventional university-based clinic staffed by school psychology graduate students under the supervision of school psychology faculty. Then, as part of the faculty planning process during the 2003–2004 academic year, the faculty identified a number of limitations associated with the university-based model. First, the number of clients served through the ICS was strictly limited by the number of experienced graduate students and available faculty time. Second, children were only served after evidencing significant academic and behavioral problems, letting them fail before providing service. In response, the faculty revised the scope and focus of the ICS to serve a larger population of students and reflect a problem-solving, interventions-based orientation.

The AWCP was launched and sustained with relatively limited financial resources, holding promise for its replication by other school-university partnerships. Internal university funds were used to support one graduate assistant and a one-course buyout for the faculty member who directs the ICS. Since 2004, the first author of this paper has been in that role. Another resource that has made the AWCP possible is the AIMSweb^® Pre-Service Training Package that is available free of charge for university-based pre-service trainers. The Pre-Service Training Package includes access to the training manuals for didactic training of students. The package also includes a subscription to AIMSweb^® assessments and various web-based reporting components, including AIMSweb^® RTI. Also, the faculty restructured the university program to require student participation in the AWCP.

The success of the AWCP would not be possible without the buy-in and support of school administrators and teachers at the partner schools. A series of initial meetings with district administrators, including the associate superintendent and director of special education facilitated early discussions about the AWCP and how the program would benefit the district. Numerous follow-up meetings and e-mail correspondences helped to reassure school principals. In implementing any educational, systemic change, it is imperative that all constituents “communicate, communicate, communicate!”, which was done extensively in the spring and summer of 2004. The relational aspect of the collaboration cannot be overemphasized. For months prior to launching the program, rapport and trust were fostered between the university and school personnel. University faculty emphasized the service component of the AWCP, while underscoring the importance of research.

In three short years, school psychology students working in the Indiana University Academic Well-Check Program benchmarked thousands of students and served many of them through research-based reading and math interventions. Over 2,600 students have been screened, and approximately 305 students (across almost 80 classrooms) have been served in Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions. Faculty and students in the AWCP have also begun to make scholarly contributions through presentations at national conferences and peer and non-peer reviewed journals. Students have made presentations about their interventions using peer tutoring and paired reading. A non-peer reviewed article on the use of instructional level assessment (ILA) within RTI was recently published and numerous empirical manuscripts and one dissertation are also well under way.