Our Projects and Products
title-inside title-centered
2
Current Projects

The Agency for Persons with Disabilities
The Florida Center of Reading Research at Florida State University along with the FSU College of Social Work is partnering with Florida’s Agency for Persons with Disabilities to evaluate and improve their assessment tool for people with developmental disabilities.
Reach Every Reader
"A student who fails to read adequately in first grade has a 90 percent probability of reading poorly in fourth grade, and a 75 percent probability of reading poorly in high school. Together, we aim to make significant progress in solving the crisis in early literacy. The most effective interventions for at-risk readers work best when implemented early, before they fail."
Center for Translational Behavioral Science
“The mission of the Center for Translational Behavioral Science at Florida State University is to promote public health and health equity using a sustainable team science approach for the development and wide spread implementation of behavioral and biobehavioral interventions across the translational spectrum. CTBS relies on a continuous cycle of interaction between basic behavioral and biomedical scientists, translational researchers, treatment providers, and communities to develop interventions reaching diverse and under-served populations in local communities and beyond. In our partnership with CTBS, we will assist these scientists, providers, and communities through providing methodological guidance through power analyses and intervention methods, and will use best practices for analyzing data from clinical trials and other community-based interventions.”Recent Product Innovations

Teacher Assistive Scoring Platform
Dr. Petscher received a GAP award to develop an educational platform that allows teachers and students to simultaneously access an assessment tool, so that teachers could record results as students take assessments. The platform cuts down on the number of forms students and teachers need for performance and scoring and allows for information to be more easily accessible for evaluation.
The Earlier Assessment for Reading Success
Dr. Petscher developed a web application that will assist teachers in projecting reading success in elementary-age students beyond the standard one-year period. Currently, based on a series of fluency assessments, teachers are able to determine if a kindergartener, first, second or third grader is high to moderate to a low-risk candidate in reading success. “This app allows a teacher to take one or more of their fluency scores for students and obtain a percent-change indicator of being a successful reader not just in the current year but up to three years later,” Yaacov Petscher, associate director of the Florida Center for Reading Research at FSU, said. “That’s a very powerful tool to give a teacher,” Petscher added. “We can predict your chance of being a successful reader out to third grade.”
System for Performing Assessment without Testing
Dr. Petscher and Dr. Schatschneider received a US Patent (9,299,266) in 2016 in which “a system for educational assessment without testing is provided that includes one or more client systems that are connected to a network allowing students or school officials to communicate with an education framework that performs and manages educational assessment.”