Part 3: Assigning Progress Monitoring to Tier 2 and Tier 3

Part 3: Assigning Progress Monitoring to Tier 2 and Tier 3



Tiers are identified through screening and intervention is in place for tier 2 and 3. Now it’s vital to monitor their progress at the student’s performance level. 

What exactly IS Progress Monitoring? Why do we need it? 

Progress monitoring is a standardized method of formative assessment that tells us how well students are responding to intervention.

Progress monitoring is used:
  1. To assess student progress or performance in those areas in which they were identified by universal screening as being at-risk for failure. 
  2. You want to identify students who are not making adequate progress in class
  3. And you want to build effective intervention programs for those students 

Why do we need it? 
  1. students learn more quickly because they are receiving more appropriate instruction 
  2. teachers use it to make more informed instructional decisions 
  3. documentation of student progress is available for accountability purposes
  4. communication improves between families and professionals about student progress 
  5. It really helps teachers have higher expectations for their students
  6. (and as a result) there is a decrease in special education referrals. 

The first step is to choose a tool. According to the National Center on Intensive Intervention or NCII, Progress monitoring tools should have these characteristics:
  1. Probes should be brief 
  2. Each assessment is a repeated measure that captures student learning
  3. It should be a measure of age-appropriate outcomes
  4. And finally, it should be reliable, valid and evidenced-based

And, just FYI, Classworks has been awarded the highest ratings from NCII. 

CBM is the gold-standard accepted methodology for progress monitoring. CBM stands for Curriculum-Based Measurement. Now, there are two types of CBMs – Global Indicators and Curriculum Sampling. Both indicate student progress on the general curriculum and overall effectiveness of the intervention. A global indicator assesses specific abilities or skills that have an overall impact on student outcomes, where curriculum sampling measures the student's understanding of a grade-level curriculum.

In order to best accommodate all grades, the Classworks model uses both Global indicators and Curriculum Sampling.

Curriculum Sampling uses items related to the grade-level curriculum and is appropriate for measuring content, concepts, and problem-solving skills. Curriculum sampling is especially effective for older students since they respond differently to intervention. Focusing on growth is the key here and even impacts dropout rates.  

Curriculum sampling offers the opportunity to monitor a student’s growth within the intervention and see if they are responding to the intervention. Classworks curriculum sampling is correlated to the same scaled score as the Universal Screener. This keeps data apples to apples for teachers providing a clear picture of student growth.

Use curriculum sampling when your objective is to monitor overall student growth and the impact of intervention. You can never go wrong with this choice. The purpose of progress monitoring is to measure the student’s response to intervention and curriculum sampling definitely accomplishes this for you. 

But sometimes students need their progress monitoring a little more skill-focused. Global indicators allow teachers to zoom in on one skill area and monitor student growth within that set of skills. 

You may choose to use a skills-based, domain-specific probe if:
  1. Students are notably behind in a specific area  - and this may be the case for many students right now. 
  2. Some districts and schools have MTSS guidelines that require a specific area be identified and monitored. In this case, you may look for a significant area of weakness and monitor student progress with that specific area using the global indicator. 
  3. For our students with disabilities, IEP goals may require a specific area be monitored for documentation. Using skills-based probes provides the documentation you need to measure growth and mastery of an IEP goal. 

Now that you have your progress monitoring tool, let’s look at putting it into action. CBMs need to be at the student’s performance level. Your screening data helps identify this level. 

If your students are using a Classworks assessment, this level is indicated for you in the RTI Recommendations report along with their score, percentile ranking, and domain-specific proficiency. 

Let’s look at an example. Lawson is a sixth-grade student who took a Classworks assessment. As you see here, that assessment has indicated his performance level is on 3rd-grade level. His intervention has already been put in place as an Individualized Learning Path or ILP in Classworks which reflects that level as well. Progress Monitoring at that level allows careful monitoring of Lawson’s response to the intervention and continues to inform his learning path. 

On the other hand, if you are using another assessment, Classworks progress monitoring will default to one grade level below the student's assigned grade level. So if your assessment data indicates that a student’s performance level is, for instance, 2nd grade, just adjust the level to make sure the student is receiving appropriate intervention and monitoring. 

Click start! Individualized learning driven by your assessment data serves as intervention while Juan’s response to the intervention is measured through Classworks Progress Monitoring. 

When students log in they will see a Progress Monitoring CBM probe ready to take. These probes will appear automatically each week. If you only want a student to take it every other week, just have him skip a week!

So, what happens now? 

In Classworks, assessment data - both screening data and progress monitoring data- drive an individualized instructional plan for each student so you know that a solid intervention is ready to go. Progress Monitoring is now in place to measure the student’s responsiveness to that intervention. 

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