Now that the school year is well underway, parents and educators are watching carefully to see whether students are meeting expectations as they progress through their grade-level curricula. For students who struggle with learning, "watching" is often an exercise in frustration, and for students with LD, it is more often than not a prescription for failure.

That's not to say that parents and educators are not constantly trying new strategies and varying approaches to instruction when students show signs of struggle. Until recently, we have most often ended up using a "teach-and-test" approach, setting what we think are reasonable goals for each student, teaching specific skills and content, and keeping track of scores on measures of content mastery. So why the need for change? Simply stated, it's not working!

Even though special education law (IDEA) tells us that all students, including those with disabilities, must have access to (and make reasonable progress in) the general curriculum, many continue to fall further behind. And the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) tells us that schools must gather information about how all students are doing as compared to grade-level standards. Progress monitoring can help us to achieve both these goals.

While there are a number of different approaches to progress monitoring, I'd like to draw special attention to Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM). This approach offers teachers a quick and easy way to gather precise information about what students know, how they can record (chart) students' progress as they acquire new skills, and how students' progress compares to the achievement goals and expectations set for the school and school district, as well as against state and national norms.

Some Features of Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM)

• Student performance is measured very frequently (and there's no wait for feedback, so needed adjustments in teaching can be made quickly)
• Assessments (often called "probes") are brief and easy to administer; each probe is different, and the probes assess the same skills at the same level of difficulty
• Scores on each student's probe can be compared to previous performance, and rate of progress can easily be graphed (students love doing this, and it is a wonderful way for them to show off their progress and set personal goals)

The really good news is that research shows that progress monitoring works! When teachers use CBM to inform their instructional decisions, students learn more, teacher decision-making improves (because it is grounded in current, student-specific data), and students are more aware of their own performance.

What about students for whom a progress monitoring approach appears not to be successful? The answer has two parts: One has to do with the level at which the student is performing, and the other has to do with the rate at which the student is making progress. Collecting CBM data allows parents and educators to consider both how well the student is learning and the rate at which learning is taking place. With these in mind, informed decisions about tutoring, supplementing instruction or referral for special education assessment can be made.

Additional Resources

• The National Center on Student Progress Monitoring
• Strategies for Making Adequate Yearly Progress, Using Curriculum Based-Measurement for Progress Monitoring: Student Achievement and School Accountability Conference, October 2002.
• Classroom Assessment: An introduction to general progress monitoring procedures
• Quenemoen, R., Thurlow, M., Moen, R., Thompson, S., & Morse, A.B. (2004). Progress Monitoring in an Inclusive Standards-based Assessment and Accountability System. (Synthesis Report 53). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, National Center on Educational Outcomes.
• CEC TODAY feature on Progress Monitoring.
• Curriculum-Based Measurement Warehouse.
• Current Practice Alert (Spring 2000). Division of Learning Disabilities & Division of Research, Council for Exceptional Children.
• Expert Connection - Teaching LD