What is Student Progress Monitoring and How Will it Help Me?

1. What is Student Progress Monitoring and How Will it Help Me? Laura Florkey School Psychologist Princeton City Schools

2. What is Data-Based Decision Making? • According to the National Center for Student Progress Monitoring, data-based decision making is a time-efficient way for educators to make informed instructional decisions and to quantify students’ rate of progress. • It enables you to achieve two goals that are both essential for improving student achievement.  • 1. To help you examine the effectiveness of the instructional strategies you use.  • 2. To help your school raise student achievement and demonstrate its success.  • These are critical under the provisions of No Child Left Behind. 

3. www.studentprogress.org Curriculum Based Measurement (CBM) • Curriculum Based Measurement (CBM) is an essential element of data-based decision making and student progress monitoring. • CBM is a standardized assessment system used to assess and monitor student progress in the academic areas of reading, mathematics, and written expression.

4. Why Monitor Student Progress? • Teachers can analyze student CBM scores and adjust student goals and instructional programs • Student data can be compared to teacher’s classroom or school district data • Can be graphed to provide a visual record of student performance

5. How Can Progress Monitoring Help My Students? • Progress Monitoring is designed to: • Identify students who are not demonstrating adequate progress • Compare the effectiveness of different forms of instruction • Thereby helping teachers design more effective, individualized instructional programs for struggling learners! • Also provides the information required to make data-based decisions at team meetings • Great documentation to show that an intervention is or is not beneficial • Intervention data is required by law and by your building!

6. How Can Progress Monitoring Help My Students? • An effective way to communicate information about your students. • Graphs provide visual data that is clear to both parents and students. • Graphs are great to use in progress reports, team meetings, and conferences.

7. What to Examine in CBM Data • INCREASING SCORES: • Student is progressing in that academic skill area. • FLAT/DECREASING SCORES: • Student is not benefitting from instruction and requires a change in the instructional program.

8. Progress Monitoring (PM) and RTI • PM is an essential tool for RTI. • With PM, student academic performance is assessed using CBMs. • Decisions about movement through the Tiers in RTI are made based on PM data.

9. Progress Monitoring at Tier 1 • All students are universally screened using CBM. • Students whose scores fall below benchmark are suspected as being at-risk for reading or math difficulties. • These suspected at-risk students should be closely monitored for 4 to 8 weeks to confirm or disconfirm their at-risk status

10. Setting Appropriate Goals • Create Your Goal • Use existing benchmarks • Create your own goal using expected growth rates • Graph your goal • Draw a line across the page at the level of the goal • Draw a line from baseline to the goal

11. Creating Literacy Goals Using Weekly Growth Rates for Oral Reading Fluency Grade LevelRealistic StandardAmbitious Standard 1st Grade 2 3 2nd Grade 1.5 2 3rd Grade 1 1.5 4th Grade .85 1.1 5th Grade .5 .8 6th Grade .3 .65 Goal Formula: Current performance X (growth rate X the number of weeks until id goal reviewed) = YOUR GOAL!

12. Example • 3rd grader Ben’s median R-CBM score = 35. • 10 weeks until the Winter Break • Team would like to see Ben make progress at a similar rate to his peers (1.0 words/week). • 35 WRC/min+ (10wks x 1.0) = 45WRC/min • This is the goal by Winter Break!

13. Hintze, John M. Using Student Progress Monitoring in a Response to Intervention Model Making Decisions: 3 Point Rule If 3 weeks of instruction have occurred and student has at least 6 data points, examine the most recent 3 consecutive scores. • If all 3 scores fall below the goal line, a change in instruction is recommended. • If all 3 scores fall above the goal line, a goal raise is recommended.

14. (http://www.studentprogress.org Making Progress or Not?

15. Progress Monitoring atTier 2 • Use the goal-setting and decision-making standards to make decisions. • In addition to the core curriculum, students in Tier 2 receive supplemental intervention • Student benchmark and growth status is evaluated after several weeks of intervention – Students at or above benchmark return to Tier 1 – Students below benchmark, but making adequate growth progress remain in Tier 2 • – Students below benchmark and continuing to demonstrate poor growth progress are moved to Tier 3

16. Progress Monitoring at Tier 3 • Students receive more intense individualized interventions. • Progress monitoring data should be collected frequently (i.e., weekly). • After several weeks, student progress toward their goal should be examined using the 3 point decision making rule. • Students making progress can move back to Tier 2 • Unresponsive students remain in Tier 3

17. Helpful Tips • Create a bulletin board so that your students can see their progress and goals. • Monitor 1 or 2 students every week instead of monitoring the whole group at one time during group interventions. • Have students use graph paper to graph their own data.

18. Helpful Resources! • National Center For Student Progress Monitoring • www.studentprogress.org • Many valuable resources and information • Intervention central • www.Interventioncentral.org • A variety of interventions ideas and information for educators • Create your own math worksheets and reading probes for free!

19. Helpful Resources • Chart Dog • http://www.jimwrightonline.com/php/chartdog_2_0/chartdog.php • Create your own chart and graphs for free • DIBELS • https://dibels.uoregon.edu/measures/ • Progress monitoring materials for literacy skills are FREE after you create a username and password • RTI in the Classroom: Guidelines and Recipes for Success • Rachel Brown-Chidsey,

20. References • Safer, Nancy. Improving Student Outcomes Through Progress Monitoring [PowerPoint Slides]. Retrieved from http://www.studentprogress.org/library/presentations.asp#applyingrti • National Center on Student Progress Monitoring www.studentprogress.org • Hintze, John M. Using Student Progress Monitoring in a Response to Intervention Model [PowerPoint Slides]. Retrieved from www.studentprogress.org/doc/webinars/RTIwebinarslides_000.pdf