Early childhood intervention teams face many challenges in providing high-quality services. Challenges include accurately assessing children's current strengths and needs, developing transdisciplinary goals and objectives, individualizing intervention within the context of developmentally appropriate activities, and monitoring children's performance across time. To address the complexities and challenges of providing services to young children with special needs and their families, a linked system to intervention has been recommended. Within a linked system approach, assessment information guides the development of goals and objectives, which in turn guides individualization of intervention efforts and evaluation activities. Specifically, recommended practice suggests the use of curriculum-based measures in promoting a linked system approach. This article outlines a five-step process for use in selecting and adopting curriculum-based measures designed to facilitate a linked system approach and promote family-centered, collaborative early childhood intervention practices.
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