Recording of Jan Hasbrouck, Ph.D.: Educators as Physicians: Using Data from Reading Assessments for Professional Decision-Making Webinar

DESCRIPTION:

K-12 educators everywhere are being asked to administer ever-increasing numbers of assessments to their students. Teachers screen students to determine who may need additional assistance in learning to read, administer diagnostic assessments to students to determine their skills strengths and weaknesses for planning instruction, and monitor students’ progress to determine if their skills are showing improvement.  All this testing can take a lot of time and requires a lot of paperwork. It certainly has an impact on the amount of time teachers have available for planning and instruction.

This webinar takes a close look at WHY these assessments are being used, HOW to select and administer the most time-efficient and valuable assessments, and—most important of all--how to USE the data to make key instructional decisions that can truly help us provide the best possible reading instruction to all students.  In the same way that we expect our physicians to make their decisions about our health and wellness by using the best medical information available, educators must use assessment tools to inform and guide our professional decisions regarding students’ academic “health and wellness”.  But because it is instruction—not testing—that is the most important task of schools, we must select and use reading assessments as efficiently and effectively as possible.     

PRESENTER BIO:

Dr. Jan Hasbrouck is a researcher, educational consultant, and author. She served as Executive Consultant to the Washington State Reading Initiative and as an advisor to the Texas Reading Initiative. Dr. Hasbrouck was a reading specialist and literacy coach for 15 years before teaching at the University of Oregon and later becoming a professor at Texas A&M University. Dr. Hasbrouck has provided educational consulting to individual schools across the United States as well as in Mexico,
Peru, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, and Germany, helping teachers, specialists, and administrators design and implement effective assessment and instructional programs targeted to help low-performing readers.

Dr. Hasbrouck earned her B.A. and M.A. from the University of Oregon, and completed her Ph.D. at Texas A&M. Her research in areas of reading fluency, reading assessment, coaching, and English Learners has been published in numerous professional books and journals. She is the author and coauthor of several books including “Conquering Dyslexia”, “Reading Fluency”, “Student-Focused Coaching” and “Educators as Physicians”, along with several assessment tools. Dr. Hasbrouck works with the McGraw Hill publishers as an author of their “Wonders” and “Wonder Works” reading and intervention programs. In 2019 she helped found Read Washington, a 501(c3) nonprofit organization with the mission to “provide professional development opportunities, based on the science of reading, so every student becomes a skilled and confident reader.” She also enjoys volunteering at her grandson’s K-8 school in Seattle.