What is Progress Monitoring?

What is Progress Monitoring?

Overview

While student progress monitoring sounds fairly self-explanatory, it has a distinct meaning when used in an MTSS model or as an element of a student's IEP. Student progress monitoring is a repeated measurement of performance, using curriculum independent, equated probes, to inform instruction of individual students in general and special education, especially in grades K-8.

The purpose of progress monitoring is to measure the overall effectiveness of any intervention. Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) Probes are used for identified students and can serve as documentation as part of the tiered intervention process or for referral for special education testing. These probes have multiple forms equated for the same skills at the same level of difficulty. They truly measure progress and show retention of gains with successive test administrations.

The progress monitoring reports track results for every test instance during the intervention period and include targeted Rate of Improvement goals and a trend line to establish the student's current Rate of Improvement. As students complete their weekly CBMs, their progress monitoring results automatically inform their learning paths, reflecting the student's response to the intervention. 

What are CBM Probes?

CBM stands for Curriculum-Based Measurement. It is the process by which a student’s general learning is measured, with repeated administrations of equated probes. When used for progress monitoring, Curriculum-Based Measurements should have the following characteristics:

  1. Brief and easy to administer

  2. Assess the same way each time, either a specific content domain or sample of the year-long grade-level curriculum

  3. Administered the same way every time

  4. Incorporate automatic tests of retention and generalization

  5. Offer reliable and valid scores

  6. Have 20 parallel forms

  7. Scores are graphed for teachers to use to make decisions about instructional programs and teaching methods for each student

  8. Highly prescriptive and standardized

  9. CBM measures any instructional approach, making no assumptions about instructional hierarchy for determining measurement.


Classworks offers two types of CBM Progress Monitoring:

  • Curriculum Sampling

  • Domain Based

CBM is the gold-standard accepted methodology for progress monitoring.

Within Classworks, both types of progress monitoring automatically inform the student’s individualized learning intervention.

Teachers can easily choose between these two approaches for each student when they activate progress monitoring within Classworks.