Can I give a measure more than once?
Although we understand some schools and states may require weekly data points or more frequent testing than we recommend for their students, this is not how the easyCBM system was developed.
Listed below we will explain a work around to allow you to conduct your weekly testing, but we want you to know how our system is intended to work and why we only have a set number of measures we top out at.
The 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).
In general, our system is set-up to test a student's knowledge in a given area and then help to determine areas of weakness where a student needs further assistance. Once a test is given, and a deficit is determined, then we suggest teachers give guided instruction in those weak areas in order to help build and reinforce a student's knowledge base.
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.
Work-around for weekly testing:
If you want more measures, and you have already upgraded to the Deluxe version, you will have to first delete the test and then have the student retake it. This will remove the original score.
You can choose to delete a measure and then retest a student, but the system will only retain the most recent score for the student. There is no way around this feature. The only suggestion we can offer in retesting and keeping multiple scores of the same measure, would be to export the student data and then cut and paste the data into like columns.
To export data, login to your account and go to the “Reports” section. Next choose the “Groups” tab. To the right of each group name is a link to do a “Data Export” by exporting a .csv file. Choose the group whose data you want to export and an Excel file in the .csv format will be downloaded to your desktop. A .csv format means a document has no formatting associated with it.
If you want the additional ability to do an analysis of your data, you will need to save this document in an .xls format. In an .xls format, you can calculate things like average scores for your class and compare those to the score associated with the 50th percentile (“on-grade performance”). If you are unsure how to calculate these or which formulas to use in Excel, please do a Google search for instructions.
Once you have downloaded your data file, delete the test(s) and then they can be re-administered. The easiest way to delete a student progress monitoring measure or benchmark test is by accessing the student’s assessment history.
To locate this feature, login to your account and go to the Student tab. Next locate the student name in the “Students” column to the right (in this example it's Doe, John). To the right of the student name there is a blue magnifying glass icon (just to the left of a blue edit button and the red delete button). Click on that icon and a summary list of assessments for that student will appear in a drop down window.
If the assessment information is not immediately visible in the window, scroll down the page to find the list. Assessments that have a season in their title (Vocabulary 3_Fall) are benchmark tests and those that end with an underscore and number (Basic Reading 3_1) are progress monitoring measures.In this setting, there is an option to delete a student record. If you look to the right of the measure name you will see a trash can icon. If you select a measure for deletion, a pop-up window will ask, Are you certain you want to remove this test? If you click OK, the measure will permanently be deleted from your account.
*Note: If you are deleting a student benchmark test in order to re-administer it, remember the benchmark testing window must be open in order for a student to retake a test. All you need do is extend the ending date of the benchmark window to include the date the test will be retaken. Then once the test is complete, return the end date to what it was prior to the re-administration of the test.