Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Who should be involved in a DTORF Online rating?

A DTORF Online rating should represent a consensus among all of the members of a rating team. At least three persons, including a parent, who know a student well should rate a student to assure a broad perspective about the student's strengths and weaknesses in several settings and with different people. The recommended rating team should include the teacher, assistant teacher, parent, and others involved in the student's education. Also, older students are sometimes involved in their own DTORF Online assessment.

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What should a rating team do if there is uncertainty about whether or not the student has mastered an item?

Uncertainty about whether or not a student has achieved mastery of an item may indicate that that the student is close to achieving that objective in one setting but not in another. A team should first review the examples provided for the item and discuss their own observations of the student. If this fails to resolve rating differences among the team, postpone the marking of that item until each team member can gather more information or view the student in several situations.

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How should a student with a severe sensory or physical disability be rated when it is not possible to demonstrate mastery of an item requiring these abilities?

If there is an alternative way for the student to demonstrate the intent of the item, mark it X to indicate it is a current objective and add a note at the end of the DTORF Online form explaining the nature of the disability and the alternative response mode being used. If it is not possible to use a substitute response mode, rate the item mastered (✓) and note this at the end of the form. That item should be included in the student's total of items mastered but attention must be given to alternative modes for continuing to acquire needed competencies.

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How is a student's developmental stage determined when DTORF Online items are rated X in more than one stage?

Use the 20% — 80% rule to clarify a student's overall stage of development. If the student has mastered at least 20% but not more than 80% of the items in a stage, it becomes the designated stage for purposes of instruction. Less than 20% indicates that the student has not yet developed sufficiently to begin instruction in that stage. With more than 80% of the items mastered in a stage, instruction should begin in the next stage.

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What Does an Individual DTORF Online Rating Show About Instructional Needs?

An individual DTORF Online rating reveals a student's overall stage of social, emotional, and behavioral development. The overall stage is where the majority of the items are rated X. Instruction should begin at this stage and target the selected items for the student's current learning objectives. A rating should provide at least 1 but not more than 4 learning objectives from each subscale.

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What is a Group DTORF Online?

After individual DTORF Online ratings are completed for each student in a group, use the group form to combine all the selected learning objectives for a group profile. This form reports only the items marked X for each student. The resulting pattern of Xs indicates competencies needed by the group collectively and those that are unique to individual students. This enables a teacher to include the selected objectives for each student when planning a group lesson.

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How does the DTORF Online accommodate diversity and cultural differences among students, teachers, and parents?

The question of diversity and cultural bias is appropriately raised when selecting an instrument to assess the development of children and youth. A major reason for the wide-spread applicability of DTORF Online is the freedom for a rating team to judge a student's mastery of an item in the context of the expectations and values of the local program, community, and family. DTORF Online has been used with thousands of troubled children and teens in the United States and internationally over a 30-year period.

Field-based research on the effectiveness of the Developmental Therapy-Teaching approach, using DTORF Online as the measure of progress, has included children of all ages, gender, race, personalities, socioeconomic levels, and geographic areas — both urban and rural. It has been used to assess the behavioral, social, communication, and cognitive competence of students with autism, intellectual delay; and language, hearing or visual disabilities. It has also been used to assess those with multiple disabilities, those who are gifted, and those with no disabilities.

Internationally, educators from Canada, China, India, Germany, Holland, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Puerto Rico, Quebec, Russia, Scotland, South Korea, and the Virgin Islands have used the DTORF Online, with translations into their own languages. Among these educators, informal exchanges indicate that the social, emotional, and behavioral milestones reflected in the DTORF Online items are universally recognized as relevant milestones for students' development.

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Why Doesn't DTORF Online Online work with my browser?

You may need to check your browsers settings. Javascript must be enabled, and you must have cookies enabled. Most browsers have a method to change enable these options under a "tools" or "settings" menu. This program was optimized for Internet Explorer 8, Chrome, and Firefox for Windows operating systems.

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