BRT Research Assistant Advances

BRT Research Assistant Advances to Doctoral Candidacy

May 17, 2016

BRT Research Assistant Dan Farley, who heads up our work on Extended Assessments for students with significant disabilities, successfully presented his dissertation proposal on May 5, 2016. This is the next-to-last step in his journey toward earning the coveted Ph.D. in Educational Methodology, Leadership, and Policy from the University of Oregon. Dan anticipates defending his dissertation in 2017. His study will focus on modeling growth for students with significant cognitive disabilities (SWSCD). This is an area of study complicated by test scaling, missing data, group heterogeneity, and small sample sizes. In his dissertation study, Dan is proposing to address some of these challenges by modeling achievement and growth for students in multiple exceptionality categories while controlling for missing data and test switching patterns during multiple imputation. If growth variance is significant, he will use growth mixture modeling to determine whether there are homogeneous subgroups of students with similar intercept and growth patterns within the overall population of SWSCD. In addition, he will use students’ sex, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status in model building and to analyze class membership post hoc.

His recent publications include:

Tindal, G., Nese, J. F. T., Farley, D., Saven, J., and Elliot, S. (2016). Documenting reading achievement and growth for students taking alternate 
assessments. Tindal, G., Nese, J. F. T., Farley, D., Saven, J., and Elliot, S. (2016). Exceptional Children, 1-16. doi: 10.1177/0014402915585492. 
ecx.sagepub.com/content/82/3/321

Saven, J. L., Anderson, D., Nese, J. F. T., Farley, D., & Tindal, G. (2016). Patterns of statewide test participation for students with significant cognitive
disabilities. Journal of Special Education, 1-12. doi: 10.1177/0022466915582213.      http://sed.sagepub.com/content/49/4/209.short

Anderson, D., Farley, D., & Tindal, G. (2016). Test design considerations for students with significant cognitive disabilities. Journal of Special Education. 49, 3-15. doi: 10.1177/0022466913491834. http://sed.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/06/24/0022466913491834.abstract

Congratulations, Dan!