Marker Learning today announced that development is complete for the Marker Method, a comprehensive psychological, academic, language, and psychomotor assessment battery built over the past three years to change how evaluations are conducted for students with learning disabilities.

Analyzing an exponentially larger data set than typical batteries for cognitive, academic, language, and psychomotor skills, the assessment offers much more comprehensive clinical information to accurately evaluate for dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, language disorders, and giftedness, along with evaluations related to autism and ADHD.

The instrument has already been pilot-tested on nearly 1,000 students and has met the milestones required to enter the final validation and norming stage. It will be available in 2027.

The decades-long problem Marker Method tackles

One in five students has a learning or attention issue, according to the National Center for Learning Disabilities. Yet millions are never identified, assessed, or adequately supported.

Some of the difficulty begins with the instruments themselves. The current “gold standard” in use was developed in the 1950s and has changed little since. In addition, a single evaluation is resource-intensive, requiring more than 10 hours to administer, score, and produce a comprehensive report.

Compounding the identification challenge is a shortage of qualified professionals. The National Association of School Psychologists estimates that tens of thousands of additional psychologists are needed to meet recommended staffing levels, as districts struggle to keep pace with demands for special education evaluations. The private-pay market is under similar strain, where tests can exceed $10,000 and waitlists commonly run from 12 to 18 months.

The consequence of not being properly evaluated may leave children without support for their developmental needs, and resulting challenges may compound over a lifetime. For example, a study by the Boston Consulting Group cited that dyslexic learners represent 48% of the prison population, 49% of the homeless population, and 31% of children in juvenile detention.

For English language learners, who make up 10 percent of the U.S. student population, the challenges are equally problematic. No comprehensive psychological or psychoeducational battery has ever been developed or normed for multilingual learners, which means linguistically diverse students are often compared to peers who have been learning English their entire lives. This practice contributes heavily to potential misdiagnosis and incorrect special education placement for many English language learners.

For Stefan Bauer, Founder and CEO of Marker Learning, getting an evaluation in third grade was the most impactful event in his life. “I was on a path to not graduate from high school until my mom, almost 30 years ago, paid $8,000 for a private evaluation. Once I was diagnosed, I got the right support and was able to go on to Yale. Costs have only gone up since then, and the assessments being used haven’t changed. We finally have the technology and the team to build a new paradigm of assessment so every student can get the help they need.”

Developed with leading global experts

The Marker Method battery is co-authored by Dr. Samuel Ortiz, Marker Learning’s Chief Clinical Officer and one of the field’s most cited voices on nondiscriminatory assessment, cross-battery assessment, and evaluation of specific learning disabilities in English learners; Dr. Erica LaForte, an applied psychometrician with decades of experience in test development, and co-author of the Woodcock-Johnson V; and Lucie Ackley, who leads research and product development at Marker Learning and has deep expertise in statistics and technology. The three have led development of the Marker Method through its initial design, pilot testing, and early validation phases as the assessment now moves on to the final norming stage before launch.

The Marker Method was also developed in collaboration with researchers at leading institutions in the United States and field practitioners to ensure its responsiveness to their assessment needs spanning psychometrics, test construction, reading and language development, test fairness, bilingual and multilingual measurement, and more.

“For decades we have asked practitioners to make high-stakes decisions about bilingual children using tools that were never normed on them,” said Dr. Ortiz. “We have known how to do this better for a long time. What has been missing is an instrument built from the ground up on that knowledge, rather than retrofitted to it. I view this as a culmination of my life’s work, and I’m honored to serve Marker and the millions of English language learner students who currently don’t have access to tools that are fair and nondiscriminatory.”

Over 20,000 data points instead of 20

The Marker Method reimagines each element of the evaluation process, beginning with a customized assessment plan generated for every student rather than a fixed battery administered to all.

Current paper and pencil-based assessments typically utilize roughly 20 to 40 data points over the course of an evaluation consisting primarily of test scores. In contrast, the Marker Method analyzes more than 26,000 data points, including not just actual test item answers but also metadata that provides deeper insight into a student’s attention, motivation, engagement, and task enjoyment. And through adaptive testing techniques that have never been deployed for disability identification before, the Marker Method also saves time, relieving pressure on a stretched workforce and freeing capacity to evaluate students with both fine-tuned precision and greater efficiency.

The Marker Method contains 50 tests and subtests across four broad developmental domains, including cognitive, academic, language, and psychomotor functioning and has expanded the norming student group beyond monolingual students to include English language learners. For the first time ever, multilingual students will be scored against a large sample of students who share their language development history, and evaluators will have scores they can trust.

“Using innovative technology to capture thousands of data points on each student, across thousands of students in the U.S., we can glean insights that traditional test instruments cannot. This can fundamentally change how students are assessed for learning disabilities,” said Dr. LaForte.

About Marker Learning

Marker Learning is an assessment and research company building the Marker Method, a comprehensive psychoeducational assessment battery.

The Marker Method measures cognitive, academic, language, and psychomotor skills in both monolingual and multilingual learners, producing the clinical information needed to evaluate for dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, language disorders, and giftedness, plus supplemental data that are relevant to autism and ADHD evaluations. It is authored by Chief Clinical Officer Dr. Samuel Ortiz, Dr. Erica LaForte, and Lucie Ackley, and developed in partnership with researchers and institutions around the world. Learn more at markerlearning.com.

Media gallery

About The Author
Business Wire