easyCBM Reading measures
Like all measures on easyCBM®, alternate forms of each reading test were designed to be of equivalent difficulty, so teachers can progress monitor students from the initial screening assessments, through their progress monitoring tests every month throughout the year, comparing progress to subsequent screening assessments (winter and spring).
Our reading measures are grouped by skill sets. Each skill set progresses in difficulty with Phoneme Segmenting, Letter Names, and Letter Sounds being the easiest, Word Reading Fluency, Passage Reading Fluency being more difficult, followed by Vocabulary, and Basic and Proficient Reading Comprehension being the hardest to complete.
If you have a student who is performing below their grade level, you can give them progress monitoring measures that are a lower grade. If a student lacks the skill to be able to perform well on the Proficient Reading assessment, then use an easier test type for progress monitoring (you would still use the grade-level Proficient Reading test for benchmark screening as a way to evaluate their progress toward meeting grade-level expectations). The idea is to find what grade and what skill set the student can do, build on them and then move up to a higher grade and skill set until the student (if possible) is able to be taking assessments at their assigned grade level. If a student’s IEP states they need accommodations for any of the testing, then by all means provide them.
All our measures are designed to be of “average difficulty” for the majority of students in the middle of the year at their particular grade level. Because of this, the measures may seem too difficult for students taking tests at the beginning of the school year. As the year progresses, that will level out for the students, and you should see progress in their knowledge and skill base.
Each measure in a given skill set (e.g., Letter Names, Phoneme Segmenting, Letter Sounds, Word Reading Fluency, Passage Reading Fluency, Vocabulary, Basic and Proficient Reading, and Basic and Proficient Math) are designed to be of equivalent difficulty, so if a student does poorly on one test, and then you provide targeted instruction to help him/her improve their skills, you can have them take a different form of the same test type and use that score to see if there has been improvement.
To determine which grade level a measure is designed to assess, look at the number assigned to the test form. The first number of a measure indicates the grade. The second number is an arbitrary number and indicates nothing more than a way to distinguish one measure from another and to help keep track of which test forms a student has taken. The numbering of the assessments does not represent their degree of difficulty; it’s just a way to keep track of the tests. So if a student took Passage Reading Fluency Measure 3_1, they will have taken the first form of this 3rd grade measure of oral reading fluency.