Progress monitoring using curriculum-based measures administered to a student at multiple points in time is common in educational settings. Recent research has demonstrated that common approaches to identifying individuals in need of special services, such as the trend line or median techniques, can be negatively impacted by the nonlinear change…

Increased expectations for writing performance have created a need for formative writing assessments that will help middle school teachers better understand adolescents' grade-appropriate writing skills and monitor the progress of students with or at risk for writing disabilities. In this practice piece, we first explain research-based…

Response to intervention (RTI) is a valuable framework for providing effective and equitable educational opportunities to all students; however, recent research indicates that RTI programs are not achieving their potential for promoting student learning. As schools develop, implement, and sustain RTI systems, they would benefit from the addition…

In this synthesis, we examined and assessed the impact of self-regulated instructional components on the motivation of students with or at risk for learning disabilities (LD) in reading, writing, or mathematics intervention studies. Elements such as goal setting, self-monitoring for task completion, self-monitoring for emotions, self-talk for task…

The accuracy of decision rules for progress monitoring data is influenced by multiple factors. This study examined the accuracy of decision rule recommendations with over 4,500 second-and third-grade students receiving a tier II reading intervention program. The sensitivity and specificity of three decision rule recommendations for predicting…

Teachers have difficulty using data from Curriculum-based Measurement (CBM) progress graphs of students with learning difficulties for instructional decision-making. As a first step in unraveling those difficulties, we studied teachers' comprehension of CBM graphs. Using think-aloud methodology, we examined 23 teachers' ability to…

We used data from the 2014-2015 easyCBM assessment system to explore the applied reading intervention characteristics in a sample of 3,074 Grade 1 students (and 5,145 interventions) in school districts applying a multitiered systems of support (MTSS) framework. We describe the number of interventions, number of assessments, the intervention start…

Teachers must be proficient at using data to evaluate the effects of instructional strategies and interventions, and must be able to make, describe, justify, and validate their data-based instructional decisions to parents, students, and educational colleagues. An important related skill is the ability to accurately read and interpret…

Learning progress assessment (LPA) provides formative information about effectiveness of instructional decisions. Learning curves are usually presented as graphical illustrations. However, little is known about teachers understanding and interpreting of graphically presented information. An instrument to measure competencies in reading graphs from…

Educators use curriculum-based measurement of oral reading (CBM-R) to measure student response to instruction. Current decision-making frameworks assume students demonstrate linear growth across a school year. However, growth appears nonlinear for at least a subgroup of students. We assessed the degree to which grade two (n = 800) and grade three…

Two hundred and two (n = 202) sixth-grade students in social studies were administered a weekly vocabulary-matching curriculum-based measure (CBM) for 35 weeks. Students were also administered the Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI), along with the annual state high-stakes test in Communication Arts. CBM scores were analyzed with respect to…