By Daryl F. Mellard
Center for Research on Learning, University of Kansas
In this posting, I’ll synthesize a literature review* that several colleagues (Allison Layland and Barbara Parsons) and I recently completed that focused on progress monitoring. If a school doesn’t have an approach for formative assessment such as progress monitoring and using the results to inform instruction, RTI won’t make any sense. Progress monitoring addresses the assumption that our decisions about students’ learning and performance need to be based on objective, reliable data.
Progress monitoring is the process of assessing student responsiveness in the instructional or intervention program. Staff and school teams utilize progress-monitoring data in making decisions regarding a student’s response to the curriculum, instruction, or intervention and determining if any changes in the approach are necessary. In this framework, one can see the importance of progress monitoring as we work to improve academic and behavioral performance.
The guiding question in progress monitoring is whether a change in the educational experiences is needed. If the students are demonstrating progress at least commensurate with their peers, then, in general, no changes would be necessary.
Tools used for progress monitoring should be sensitive to small increments of growth over time, be administered frequently, be comparable across students, be relevant to instruction and curriculum or the behavioral intervention, and provide objective, reliable data that can be summarized in a clear, concise manner. The National Center on Student Progress Monitoring (http://www.studentprogress.org/) and the Research Institute on Progress Monitoring (http://www.progressmonitoring.net/) offer lists of progress-monitoring resources and publications.
Curriculum-based measurement (CBM; Deno, 1985) is one approach to progress monitoring with a long track record of successful application. CBM assesses different skills covered through the curriculum or intervention in a systematic way -- as frequently as once a week. In my next blog post, I’ll review three studies on CBM that have important implications for RTI at the secondary level.
*(Formal citation: Mellard, D.F., & Layland, D.A. with Parsons, B. (2008). RTI at the secondary level: A review of the literature. Lawrence, KS: National Center on Response to Intervention.)
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