How can teachers systematically identify when to adjust instruction for struggling students?
Page 2: Progress Monitoring
For Your Information
Although this module focuses on GOM, mastery measurement (MM) is another type of progress monitoring. Though similar in a number of ways, GOM and MM serve different purposes. Whereas GOM assesses long-term goals (i.e., the acquisition of skills across an entire school year), MM assesses short-term objectives (i.e., the acquisition of specific skills within a unit of study). To learn more about the differences between GOM and MM, view the following IRIS Information Brief:
Progress monitoring is a type of formative assessment that elementary, middle, and high school educators can use to:
- Frequently and continuously evaluate student learning
- Monitor the effectiveness of their instruction
- Make instructional changes to improve students’ academic progress
When people use the term progress monitoring, they are typically referring to a type of progress monitoring known as general outcome measurement (GOM). GOM, often referred to as curriculum-based measurement (CBM), monitors student growth toward a long-term goal.
GOM is an effective means of assessing and tracking student reading progress across the year. It is conducted on a regular basis—for example, once a week—by giving a short test (i.e., a measure or probe) to a student or a group of students. Typically, for each of these tests a single reading task (e.g., fluency) is selected because the scores on this test correlate with overall reading performance (i.e., overall indicator approach). Because GOM is administered frequently, each test should contain equivalent content. These are referred to as alternate versions or alternate forms.
Did You Know?
Although progress monitoring measures for reading typically use the overall indicator approach, math measures more commonly use the curricular sampling approach, in which tests include sample items designed to evaluate every skill in the instructional curriculum for a specific grade level. For more information on progress monitoring in mathematics, check out the following IRIS Module:
Educators do not use progress monitoring to assign grades. Rather, they score probes to measure student progress. It’s normal for scores to be low at the beginning of the year and improve over time, which is an indication that students are learning.
There are many benefits to using general outcome measurement to monitor student progress. In addition to those already mentioned, educators can use GOM data to:
- Monitor student progress over time
- Determine whether the current instruction is helping students to learn
- Determine whether students are making adequate progress toward their learning goals
- Identify students who are not making adequate progress and to provide additional or alternative instruction
- Predict student performance on the year-end assessment
- Effectively communicate academic performance to students, parents, and other school professionals
Did You Know?
GOM can be used with all students in a classroom to help determine whether an educator is providing high-quality instruction. When educators provide high-quality instruction, most of their students will show growth in reading skills across the year. However, if many students are not demonstrating sufficient improvement, the educator may need to improve the quality of her reading instruction. The following resources offer information on high-quality reading instruction.
Florida Center for Reading Research
Reading Rockets
The Meadows Center for Preventing Education Risk
Research Shows
Research on the effectiveness of CBM has been ongoing for more than 40 years. Below are just a few of the findings.
- The performance of all students (high-, average-, and low-achieving students, as well as those with disabilities) improved when teachers modified their instruction based on CBM data.
(Stecker et al. , 2005) - Research demonstrates a significant, strong overall correlation among CBM reading measures and other standardized tests of reading achievement.
(Reschly et al., 2009; Shin & McMaster, 2019) - Research shows that CBM can be used to assess the growth of language and reading skills of Spanish-speaking English learners.
(De Ramírez & Shapiro, 2006)
GOM data can also help educators to improve the academic growth of at-risk students or students with disabilities. These data can assist educators in identifying students who may need a change of instruction or additional educational support. Educators can use GOM data to:
- Compare the effectiveness of different instructional strategies
- Identify students who are not making adequate progress in a general education setting and who may therefore require additional supports
- Track progress toward goals outlined in the individualized education program (IEP) for students receiving special education services
x
individualized education program (IEP)
A written plan outlining the education of a student with a disability who is eligible for special education services. This document is developed by an IEP team and is reviewed on an annual basis; it includes the student’s current level of development, their learning goals, and the services and supports they require to attend school and receive educational benefit.
- Identify skills with which students are having the most difficulty
Lynn Fuchs, PhD
Dunn Family Chair in Psychoeducational Assessment
Department of Special Education
Vanderbilt University
Lynn Fuchs, PhD
CBM can help teachers improve the learning outcomes of their at-risk students and students with learning disabilities. Teachers can use CBM data to improve the learning outcomes of their students, and they can use CBM in two ways for that purpose. First, they can compare rates of development under contrasting instructional interventions, and in that way, they can identify which instructional components result in optimal growth rates. In addition, CBM data can help pinpoint the kinds of instructional programs and the academic skills specifically that students need more help in. And in that way, teachers can direct their instructional effort more efficiently to only use program components that actually result in good growth for students and to use their instructional time to tailor the specific skills that students are in need of working on. CBM can help teachers not only to assist them in developing strong instructional programs but also in communicating specifically and efficiently about students’ academic development. So the information on CBM most typically is graphed across time, and those graphs can be shared with other teachers, can be shared with principals, and with parents to help those individuals understand in a very concrete way the rates of development that students are experiencing. In addition, the CBM data can be aggregated across students to help teachers understand for themselves how well they’re doing in affecting growth for their classrooms of students.
For Your Information
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Progress monitoring is a key component in a multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS) or response to intervention (RTI) framework for both elementary and secondary students. The data are collected and graphed to provide an objective way for educators to determine whether students are responding to instruction or intervention. For more information, view the following IRIS Module:
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Progress monitoring is also a critical component of data-based individualization (DBI), a research-based process for using data to make instructional decisions for struggling learners or students with disabilities. DBI is often used by educators who work with students who receive individualized, intensive intervention in an RTI model. A meta-analysis of research studies (Jung et al., 2018) indicates that the use of CBM within a DBI framework is beneficial to students across reading, mathematics, and spelling/writing.
xmeta-analysis
Method of reviewing research on a given practice or program in which a systematic and reproducible literature search is conducted, specific criteria are used for including research studies in the analysis, and the combined statistical results of these studies yield an effect size for the practice or program across the studies reviewed.
The GOM Process
Regardless of whether GOM is used to track the academic progress of typically achieving students, struggling students, or those with disabilities, the overall process of collecting and interpreting GOM data to monitor progress and guide instruction is the same:
- Select a measure
- Create a graph
- Create a goal line
- Administer, score, and graph
- Make data-based instructional decisions
- Communicate progress
The remainder of this module will describe and demonstrate each of these steps in detail.
