How often should I test my students?

The easyCBM system only lets a student take a measure once because once a student has taken a test the first time, re-taking the test is likely to give an artificially-inflated score (familiarity with the material is likely to result in a higher score that is based more on practice than on actual improvement in knowledge and skill).

How often teachers assess students depends on two key questions: How quickly is it reasonable for teachers to expect to see growth in a particular skill area and how much actual intervention has the student received? In all cases, of course, it is important that the student is actually receiving focused instruction to address their skill deficits if teachers hope to see an improvement in their performance over time. The more difficult the skill being tested, the longer the time should be between testing as students need to receive targeted instruction in order to help them improve their skills.

Our testing recommendations:

Reading;

Letter Names, Phoneme Segmenting, and Letter Sounds can be given as often as every week or two – because students are able to make rapid progress in these skill areas when they are receiving in-depth interventions to help accelerate their learning

Word and Passage Reading Fluency are assessing skill areas that take longer for students to improve. We recommend testing no more often than every other week with these measure types.

Vocabulary and both Basic and Proficient Reading, we recommend testing no more frequently than every 3 to 4 weeks.

Math:

Math Measures, we recommend testing no more frequently than every 3 to 4 weeks.