1. Assessment: Progress Monitoring Part 1
CENTER FOR EQUITY PROMOTION
Assessment: Progress Monitoring Part 1
The Role of Progress monitoring within an RTI system
A Project lift Training Module
Hello. This presentation focuses on one of the major types of assessment used within an RTI framework – Progress Monitoring. Within an RTI prevention model, progress monitoring is used to assess student progress or performance in those areas in which they were identified by universal screening as being at-risk for failure (e.g. vernacular letter names in early childhood, English letter sounds in first or second grade, words read correctly per minute in more advanced grades and so on). It should be used by coaches and teachers or other school personnel to determine if students are benefitting appropriately from the instructional program, identify students who are not making adequate progress, and help make decisions about intervention programs for students who are not responding adequately to their typical instruction. 

2. Presentation Objectives
Review of the purposes of progress monitoring.
Discuss graphing and other logistical tools needed for progress monitoring
Discuss possible reasons for lack of progress within a student’s intervention program.
Let’s briefly review the rationale for conducting progress monitoring on a regular basis.
First, a body of convergent research indicates that students who struggle with reading early in their schooling typically continue to struggle. (Juel, 1988; Shaywitz et al., 1993; Francis et al., 1996). Our job is to ensure that these predictions do not become reality by identifying students who are struggling with reading as early as possible and then intervening. Progress monitoring is a vehicle for detecting these students.
Second, once an intervention has been put in place, we have no way to ensure that this intervention will be effective in meeting individual students’ needs. Therefore, progress monitoring is necessary to determine the effects of instructional interventions.
Another important benefit of progress monitoring is collecting information about students that will help in planning individual and small group instruction. An analysis of progress monitoring data can lead to increased knowledge about who and to what degree individual students respond to the type and amount of instruction the students are currently receiving.

3. What is progress monitoring?
Progress monitoring is scientifically based practice used to assess a child’s academic progress and evaluate the effectiveness of instruction. Short assessments are used on a regular basis in reading to show progress toward a certain goal.
First, let’s definite what progress monitoring is. Progress monitoring is scientifically based practice used to assess a child’s academic progress and evaluate the effectiveness of instruction. It is conducted by teachers administering short, often one-minute, assessments to a student, graphing the results, and analyzing a student’s growth toward that goal.

4. Progress Monitoring
The Why

5. Progress Monitoring Rationale
Why look at data?
Who’s learning?
Who’s not?
Simply put, progress monitoring helps teachers determine:
Who’s learning? And,
Who’s not?

6. Why Use Progress Monitoring?
To identify struggling readers as early as possible.
We do not have crystal balls that tell us if an instructional intervention will or will not be effective. Progress monitoring can help determine if instruction is meeting the needs of individual students.
To collect information about students that will be helpful for planning instruction.
There are other important reasons to collect progress monitoring data on a frequent basis.
First, a body of convergent research indicates that students who struggle with reading early in their schooling typically continue to struggle. (Juel, 1988; Shaywitz et al., 1993; Francis et al., 1996). Our job is to ensure that these predictions do not become reality by identifying students who are struggling with reading as early as possible and then intervening. Progress monitoring is a vehicle for detecting these students.
Second, once an intervention has been put in place, we have no way to ensure that this intervention will be effective in meeting individual students’ needs. Therefore, progress monitoring is necessary to determine the effects of instructional interventions.
Another important benefit of progress monitoring is collecting information about students that will help in planning individual and small group instruction. An analysis of progress monitoring data can lead to increased knowledge about who and to what degree individual students respond to the type and amount of instruction the students are currently receiving.

7. Progress Monitoring in a Response to Intervention Model
Helps distinguish students who are:
Fully benefitting from intervention instruction, or
Require additional support or need a change to that support.
Critical for determining whether students:
Are making adequate progress,
Are not making adequate progress and may need further evaluation in order to determine their instruction needs.
Progress monitoring plays an important role in the Response to Intervention framework.
For Tier 1 students, screening and benchmark assessments should be prevention-oriented. Progress monitoring tools are essential for identifying students who are benefitting as expected from the school’s reading plan and those students who may be in need of more intensive reading intervention.
For Tier 2 students, progress monitoring helps distinguish those students who are closing the gap with peers and have mastered important benchmark skills, from those students who continue to require extra help and may be in need of more targeted, specialized instruction.
Finally, for Tier 3 students, progress monitoring is critical for determining whether students are making adequate progress, / are ready to be moved into less intensive intervention groups, / or are in need of a dramatic increase in the amount and intensity of instruction in order to accelerate their learning to a rate where they potentially can begin making gains to close the gap with their peers.

8. Two Major Types of Progress Monitoring
In-Program Assessments
Are students’ mastering program objectives?
Progress Monitoring toward General Outcomes
Are students making sufficient progress toward important overall reading goals?
Both are important when making important instructional decisions!
Two types of progress monitoring help us answer important questions that help teachers continually evaluate instructional support.
In-program assessments are those assessments that go along with your core reading program materials and help teachers determine if students are learning the content of the lessons and mastering program objectives. These assessments are typically are described as unit tests, theme tests and so forth.
Something we call General outcome measures are standardized, out-of-program assessments that help teachers determine if students are making sufficient progress toward important goals and are generalizing the skills they have learned. The one-minute timings we use for screening are example general outcome measures. Oftentimes there are alternate forms of these short assessments available that can be used between the all student screening done three times per year.
Throughout the rest of this presentation, we will refer to these two types of assessment as “in-program assessments” and “general outcome progress monitoring assessments.” It is important to use information obtained from both types of assessments when making important decisions about students’ reading instruction progress.

9. In-Program Assessments
Purpose:
To identify students who have mastered taught skills and students who who may need additional instruction to master program objectives.
When:
After completion of a unit, theme, or a given number of lessons in a program.
Who:
Generally administered to all students in the instructional group.
So, again, In-program assessments typically consist of unit assessments from the comprehensive reading program or intervention reading programs and are used to determine if students are mastering skills that are being taught in the program in a timely manner. The purpose of these assessments is to identify those students who have mastered taught skills and those students who have not.
These in-program assessments occur at the completion of a unit, theme or a given number of lessons in a program. Generally, in-program assessments are administered to all students in an instructional group whether that be an entire class or small intervention group. Results of in-program assessments are valuable when used to identify students who may need additional instruction to master taught skills.

10. In-Program Assessment Results
Group Performance
How many students passed?
Do I need to re-teach the skill to the entire group?
Individual Student Performance
Who passed and who needs more instruction?
Are the same students failing each time?
When considering in-program assessment results, and end-of-quarter testing as well, look at group performance first. How many students overall passed the tests? If a majority of students do not pass the in-program unit assessment, consider reteaching the information to the entire group. If the majority of students consistently do not pass the in-program assessments, consider the appropriateness of the materials and/or the quality of instructional delivery.
Next, consider the performance of individual students: Who are the students who failed one test, two consecutive tests? Are the same students failing from time to time? Does data indicate a possible need for change in flexible grouping placement for particular students? What additional opportunities can be provided for students who are not mastering the material?
These are the types of questions that should be asked on an ongoing basis as unit assessments are conducted. When students are not passing unit assessments, re-teaching will be necessary.

11. General Outcome Measures (such as what Project LIFT currently use for screening)
Purpose: Frequent, timely measures used to determine whether students are on track for meeting end-of-year benchmarks/objectives. When: Varies by tier and individual student needs. Minimum 3 times per year. Who: All students
This presentation focuses more on general outcome measures. General outcome measures consist of assessments that provide frequent and timely information about whether students are making adequate progress and are on track for meeting end-of-year benchmarks, or other important goals. General outcome measures are short, efficient indicators of overall reading health that guide and inform instructional decisions. These assessments are most often administered three times per year at a minimum with all students. For those students who are performing below grade level, these measures are administered much more often and can provide information needed to ascertain a student’s response to instruction.

12. How Often Should We Administer Progress Monitoring Measures?
Tier
Risk Status
Ideal Frequency of Progress Monitoring
Frequency of Progress Monitoring (Limited Resources) 1
Low Risk
Three times per year (Screening assessments) 2
Some Risk
Twice per month
Once per month 3
High Risk
Once per week
Recommendations regarding the frequency of progress monitoring depend on the risk status of the students: The greater the risk, the higher the frequency of progress monitoring. Also, the availability of resources may impact the feasibility of how often progress monitoring data is collected.
For Tier 1 students (or Low Risk students), the screening assessments administered three times per year are sufficient to determine if students are remaining on-track for achieving grade level outcomes by the end of the year.
For Tier 2 students (or Some Risk students), the recommendation is to administer progress monitoring assessments at least once per month, and ideally twice per month. For Tier 3 (or High Risk) students, plan to administer progress monitoring assessments at least twice per month, and ideally once per week.

13. Progress Monitoring Module Activity 1
Stop this presentation.
As a team, view the video on Progress Monitoring featuring Dr. Roland Good from the University of Oregon.
Complete the questions from the Activity 1 handout and discuss as a group.

14. The How Progress Monitoring
So, how does one go about collecting and using progress monitoring data. Let’s take a look.

15. How to Do Progress Monitoring
Project LIFT coaches have alternate forms of progress monitoring assessments at each grade level.
These assessments match the skills assessed during whole-school screening done three times per year.
To start, we need progress monitoring probes or short tests. Within Project LIFT, these are available from your reading coach for your school. The short assessments are equal forms of the screening tests that are given three times per year to all students.
The results of these tests will be the data we use to create graphs and determine how well the student has been progressing in their literacy skills throughout the school year. Again, these would not be administered to all students – just those students are behind. 15

16. Progress Monitoring Graphs
Why use a graph?
Creates a visual picture of student learning.
Helps teachers predict learning
Provides documentation of student progress, and . . .
Facilitates the interpretation of data.
To start, using graphs greatly assists progress monitoring efforts. The many benefits of using graphs in progress monitoring include:
Creating a visual picture of student learning. You are able to see the progress or lack of progress through visually inspecting a graph.
Helping with decision making. Visually inspecting a graph helps us determine progress or lack of progress.
Helping teachers predict learning. Teachers can see where the child’s skills may end up at the end of the school year.
Providing documentation of student progress and timing of interventions, and . . .
Facilitating the interpretation of data. 16

17. Progress Monitoring Graphs
X (horizontal) axis: Indicates time
Y (vertical) axis: Indicates performance
Words Correct Per Minute
Y Axis
120
110
100 90 80 70 60
It is important to understand the components of a graphs and charts in order to understand and use progress monitoring. Progress monitoring graphs include several key components. Let’s look at two of these components to start:
The X Axis goes across and provides the time increments over which performance will be measured. Notice that equal time intervals are essential for measuring performance over time. The x axis here is months of the year.
The Y Axis includes the measurement scale. Here, for example, we are measuring words read correctly per minute. This label for this axis will differ depending on the skill measured and expectations for performance.
Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May
X Axis 17

18. Graphing of Progress Monitoring: The Basics
Baseline
Where are we starting from?
Goal
Where do we want to be at the end of the goal period?
Aim Line
How do we know if we are on track for meeting our goal?
Before setting specific progress monitoring goals, a review of the process of progress monitoring will be presented. Here are a few key terms for this process.
Baseline is where the student is starting from, or the student’s current instructional level. Generally, the middle of three baseline points will be graphed as the baseline.
The goal is obviously where we want students to be at the end of a certain period of time. Goals can be set for an entire year, part of a year, or an even shorter period of time depending on the student and situation.
An aim line is used to measure whether a student is “on track” to meet his or her predetermined goal. This is done by plotting student data over time and comparing the student’s performance to the aim line.

19. Words Correct Per Minute
What will the graph look like?
100 90 80 70 60 50
Performance Goal
Aim Line
Words Correct Per Minute
Baseline
Ultimately, the goal is to create a graph showing where the student started from, where we want them to go, and data that tracks their current performance. This slide shows what this looks like. Notice the baseline, our goal, and the aim line.
Remember, baseline is data indicating the skill level that the student is starting from, or the student’s current instructional level. Generally, the median or middle of three baseline data points will be graphed as the baseline.
The goal is where we want students to be at the end of a certain period of time. Goals can be set for an entire year, part of a year, or an even shorter period of time depending on the student and situation.
An aim line connects the baseline with the goal and is used to measure whether a student is “on track” to meet his or her goal. This is done by plotting student data over time and comparing the student’s performance relative to the aim line. X X X
Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May

20. Graphing of Progress Monitoring: The Basics
Baseline
This is where we are starting from
Middle of 3 scores
Gathered within one week
Use student’s instructional level to progress monitor
As just mentioned, baseline is our starting point. The score represents where the student is currently performing. So, a baseline for a student in 4th grade may be 45 words correct per minute. For an ECE student, the baseline might be 5 correct letter names per minute. The baseline reflects whatever skill the child is working on and their beginning score in that skill area.

21. Graphing of Progress Monitoring: The Basics
Goal Setting
For High-Risk Students:
Grades K and 1
Set goals to achieve “Benchmark” status.
Grade 2 through 5
If Grade Level status is not reasonably attainable, set goal to move to the “Strategic”category at the student’s grade level at the end of the year.
Goal setting means setting a goal of where we want the student to be in a certain amount of time. The goal should be ambitious, but realistic. If a student is significant behind on a skill, we may want to set an interim goal that would at least get the student to the next category.

22. Graphing of Progress Monitoring: The Basics
Aim Line
Connects baseline information to the goal.
Used to judge the rate at which a student is progressing.

23. Student-Level Application
“Justin”
4th Grade Screening: 48 wpm with 88% accuracy.
Expectations for Grade 4 Beginning of Year:
80+ wpm - Benchmark
79 to 60 – Strategic
59 and below - Intensive
Let’s take a real life example to understand progress monitoring.
Justin is a sample student. At the beginning of the year he was given a fourth grade screening. His middle score for reading fluency was 48 words read correctly per minute. If we look at Project LIFT’s benchmarks, we can see that this score places Justin in the High Risk category and in need of extra reading support. 33 23

24. Student-Level Application
“Justin”
Justin was administered a phonics screener which indicated significant difficulty with mastery of vowel combinations and two-syllable words.
He will receive Tier 3 instruction.
He will be administered progress monitoring assessments every two weeks.
In order to help determine the causes of Justin’s current reading difficulties, the coach looked at his reading screenings and also administered an informal phonics screener. The coach concluded that Justin had the most difficulty with words containing vowel combinations such as oa, ee, ei, and so on. In addition, Justin was missing many words that had more than more syllable. As a result, his classroom teacher and intervention time should focus on helping Justin develop these skills.
In order to determine if this instruction is effective for Justin, they will administer progress monitoring assessments every two weeks. This will occur before school every other Tuesday and take about 5 minutes. 33 24

25. Justin’s Graph Goal Goal Line Begin Data Collection Baseline Data
120
100 80 60 40 20
Goal
Words Correct Per Minute
Goal Line
Justin’s baseline middle score was 48 wpm. His goal is 81 wpm at the end of the year. This goal was chosen because 81 wpm is the minimal number for Strategic level performance by the end of the school year at fourth grade for this particular assessment. Progress monitoring data collection begins the first week in September (green data point) and will collected every two weeks.
After the graph has been constructed with baseline data, a goal line, and an aim line in place, data collection begins. X X X
Begin Data Collection
Baseline Data
Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May 25

26. Justin’s Graph Data Collect Begins
120
100 80 60 40 20
Words Correct Per Minute
Now data collection begins. Every two weeks, Justin is pulled aside before class and given a one-minute fluency assessment. The total number of words read correctly during that minute is calculated. The score is then put on his graph. This is represented by the blue dots. So, for example during the second week of October, Justin’s score was about 51 words read correctly per minute. This score is right on the goal line. Two weeks later, his score was about 45 words per minute. This score is below the goal line.
Just visually looking at the data, how well do think Justin is doing with improving his reading skills? Is he making significant progress, or does his data show lack of progress. X X X
Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May 26

27. Progress Monitoring Module Activity 2
Let’s Practice!
Download Activity 2 worksheet along with the accompanying materials for progress monitoring practice.
Follow along and complete the activities as stated.
After completion, begin viewing the Part 2 presentation on progress monitoring. This will focus on interpreting progress monitoring data.