Progress Monitoring Measure Frequency

easyCBM's "Benchmark Tests" are built to assess a student's knowledge in a given subject. The benchmark tests will determine a student's areas of weakness in a particular subject by providing a score that correlates to the program's percentile lines. Once a weakness is identified (performing below the 50th percentile), we suggest teachers create an intervention containing guided instruction and practice sessions followed by a Progress Monitoring Measure to assess improvement.

The frequency of the intervention practice sessions will be decided by the teacher, taking into account their personal knowledge of the student and how much of an added workload is appropriate. The overall goal will be to get the student to the "50th percentile" in the subject of need, aka back "on-grade".

The frequency of administered progress monitoring measures is also important to keep in mind when creating an intervention, so growth and improvement can occur. Due to each student having different testing needs, we understand some schools and states may require more frequent testing than we recommend.

Below we list our testing interval recommendations.

Recommended Testing Intervals

How often teachers assess students depends on two key questions:

1. How quickly is it reasonable for teachers to expect growth in a particular skill area?
2. How many interventions has the student been assigned?

In all cases, it is important that the student receives focused instruction/practice sessions to address their skill deficit. If the area of need has a higher degree of difficulty, we recommend a longer interval between administering progress monitoring measures as the student may need a higher amount of practice sessions in order to improve.

Reading and Spanish

1. Letter Names, Phoneme Segmenting, and Letter Sound progress monitoring measures can be given every 1-2 weeks as students are able to make rapid progress in these skill areas when they are receiving in-depth intervention practice sessions.
2. Word Reading Fluency and Passage Reading Fluency are assessing skill areas that usually take longer for students to improve in. We recommend testing every 2-3 weeks to provide extra practice sessions.
3. For Vocabulary, Basic Reading, and Proficient Reading, we recommend testing every 3 to 4 weeks due to the increased difficulty of overall reading comprehension.

For Example: if we have a 5th grade student who scored at the 35th percentile in Vocabulary. The teacher will create an intervention containing Vocabulary practice sessions occurring once or twice a week with 10-15 minutes a session, for a 3-4 week period. After 3-4 weeks of practice sessions, the teacher can administer a Progress Monitoring Measure from the 5th Grade Vocabulary measures section (Vocabulary 5_1) to gauge if there was any improvement.

MATH

For all math measures, we recommend administering progress monitoring measures every 3 to 4 weeks.

For Example: if we have a 5th grade student who scored at the 35th percentile in the Proficient Math benchmark. The teacher will use the "Benchmark Risk Analysis" and/or the "Group Report" to find the specific area of weakness. Once the specific area of need is determined, the teacher will create an intervention containing math practice sessions occurring once or twice a week with 10-15 minute practice sessions for a 3-4 week period. After 3-4 weeks of practice sessions, the teacher can now administer a Progress Monitoring Measure from the 5th Grade Math measures section (Basic Math Nums and Ops 5_1) to gauge if there was any improvement.

For more information on creating an Intervention, please see: Student Interventions