Measure Grade Level, Numbers, and Equal Difficulty

The easyCBM measures are considered on-grade level and where a student should be performing at in the middle of the academic school year. This means that some measure items in the fall may seem harder as students may not have had much exposure to them. This is normal as students come into a grade and grow into it over the year as their skill and knowledge base progress.

Progress monitoring measure names are followed by a number, an underscore, and another number. Benchmark measure names are followed by a number, an underscore, and a season (Fall, Winter, orSpring)..

The first number in the name indicates the grade and the second number is an arbitrary number that designates a way to distinguish one measure from another. The second number does not represent the degree of difficulty or the order in which to administer measures, it's just a way to keep track of the tests as they are all of equal difficulty. For ease of use, we recommend beginning with form 1 and then working your way up from there as the weeks pass. It's simply easier to remember what number comes next if you work your way up in numerical order.

Equal difficulty relates to tests within a set. Each of the reading measures, in a given skill set (phoneme segmenting, letter names, letter sounds, word reading, passage reading fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension) are of equal difficulty. The numbering of the tests, within a set, is just to distinguish them from one another, It does not indicate one test being harder than another.

The percentile scores are generated from those students, in a nation-wide sample, who've taken on-grade benchmark tests during the fall, winter, and spring. Rather you took a benchmark test (Deluxe) or a progress monitoring one, you look at the total number your student got right and compare it to the scores other students in the same grade, and at the same time of year (Progress Monitoring Scoring Guidelines) received, this will provide you with a percentile score.