Progress Monitoring Tool Research Articles

Using Curriculum-Specific Progress Monitoring to Assess Head Start Children's Vocabulary Development

Children's vocabulary development represents a critical foundation for their reading skills. This article describes a curriculum-based vocabulary progress monitoring tool that was used to track the development of Head Start children—and particularly those at highest risk for later reading difficulty—as they learned new words during the school year and then presents evidence that the progress monitoring tool measures the same underlying construct as a standardized assessment of vocabulary. Further, we explain how teachers used these data to adjust their instruction for individual children and then describe children's growth on the measure. Finally, we provide practical guidance about how this vocabulary progress monitoring tool could be strengthened, implemented, and further evaluated in other contexts.

Monitoring trends and accuracy of self‐efficacy beliefs during interventions: Advantages and potential applications to school‐based settings

AbstractSelf‐efficacy measures are context‐specific assessment tools designed to evaluate students' perceptions of capability to attain specific outcomes on particular tasks. These measures are important because they possess several desirable features typical of progress‐monitoring tools (i.e., context specific, free of reactive effects, strong psychometric properties), have been shown to be strong predictors of motivated and self‐regulatory behaviors, and possess many advantages relative to more global self‐report scales of motivation. In this article, a general framework for using these scales as a supplemental assessment tool to behavioral or skill‐based assessments will be presented and discussed. The key focus of this article involves illustrating how practitioners can evaluate and interpret the trends in students' self‐efficacy judgments as well as the accuracy of these judgments during the implementation and evaluation of academic interventions. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Scaling up kangaroo mother care in South Africa: 'on-site' versus 'off-site' educational facilitation

BackgroundScaling up the implementation of new health care interventions can be challenging and demand intensive training or retraining of health workers. This paper reports on the results of testing the effectiveness of two different kinds of face-to-face facilitation used in conjunction with a well-designed educational package in the scaling up of kangaroo mother care.MethodsThirty-six hospitals in the Provinces of Gauteng and Mpumalanga in South Africa were targeted to implement kangaroo mother care and participated in the trial. The hospitals were paired with respect to their geographical location and annual number of births. One hospital in each pair was randomly allocated to receive either 'on-site' facilitation (Group A) or 'off-site' facilitation (Group B). Hospitals in Group A received two on-site visits, whereas delegates from hospitals in Group B attended one off-site, 'hands-on' workshop at a training hospital. All hospitals were evaluated during a site visit six to eight months after attending an introductory workshop and were scored by means of an existing progress-monitoring tool with a scoring scale of 0–30. Successful implementation was regarded as demonstrating evidence of practice (score >10) during the site visit.ResultsThere was no significant difference between the scores of Groups A and B (p = 0.633). Fifteen hospitals in Group A and 16 in Group B demonstrated evidence of practice. The median score for Group A was 16.52 (range 00.00–23.79) and that for Group B 14.76 (range 07.50–23.29).ConclusionA previous trial illustrated that the implementation of a new health care intervention could be scaled up by using a carefully designed educational package, combined with face-to-face facilitation by respected resource persons. This study demonstrated that the site of facilitation, either on site or at a centre of excellence, did not influence the ability of a hospital to implement KMC. The choice of outreach strategy should be guided by local circumstances, cost and the availability of skilled facilitators.

Response to intervention with older students with reading difficulties

Addressing the literacy needs of secondary school students involves efforts to raise the achievement levels of all students and to address specifically the needs of struggling readers. One approach to this problem is to consider the application of a Response to Intervention (RTI) model with older students. We describe an approach to enhanced literacy instruction for middle school students that includes the essential components of any RTI model: universal screening, progress monitoring, and multi-tiered instructional service delivery. We use screening and progress-monitoring tools specifically tied to state accountability tests and a multi-tiered instructional framework that addresses the literacy needs of all middle school students, including struggling readers. Presently a large-scale, multi-site randomized trial is under way to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of this RTI model for middle school students.

Emerging Procedures in Narrative Assessment

This article summarizes norm-referenced and criterion-referenced measures of narration and introduces a new criterion-referenced narrative scoring system called the Index of Narrative Complexity (INC). The INC was designed to be used as a progress-monitoring tool. A preliminary study of the use of this scoring system is reported that yielded evidence suggesting that the INC can be scored consistently, yields similar scores across five elicitation formats, is sensitive to change after intervention, and correlates highly with the Test of Narrative Language (Gillam & Pearson, 2004). These results support the use of the INC as a clinical tool for evaluating the outcomes of narrative intervention.

The Use of Individual Growth and Developmental Indicators for Progress Monitoring and Intervention Decision Making in Early Education

Progress monitoring tools have been shown to be essential elements in current approaches to intervention problem-solving models. Such tools have been valuable not only in marking individual children's level of performance relative to peers but also in measuring change in skill level in a way that can be attributed to intervention and development. As such, progress monitoring measures have been central to Response to Intervention (RtI) approaches. In early childhood, progress monitoring measures have only recently been applied to the process of intervention decision-making. The purpose of this article is to describe Individual Growth and Developmental Indicators, contrast them with existing approaches to assessment in early childhood, and illustrate how they can be used within a larger problem-solving model to guide intervention decisions for infants and toddlers.

Investigation of the Psychometric Attributes of the Test of Silent Contextual Reading Fluency

The purpose of this study was to examine the psychometric integrity of the Test of Silent Contextual Reading Fluency (TOSCRF) by D. D. Hammill, J. L. Wiederholt, and E. A. Allen (2006). The TOSCRF is a recently published assessment of reading fluency for ages 7 years 0 months to 18 years 11 months that can be administered individually or in a group. The TOSCRF has 4 alternate forms and is brief; administration time is approximately 10 min. Because of its brevity, availability of alternate forms, and the possibility of group administration, the TOSCRF holds promise as an efficient screening and progress-monitoring tool. The authors report evidence of reliability and validity but further, independently obtained validity evidence is needed.

The effectiveness of classroom-based instructional assessments for progress monitoring purposes in Texas Reading First schools

The purpose of this article was twofold. First, the assessment materials from four core reading programs were informally reviewed for their adherence to Texas Reading First progress monitoring guidelines for kindergarten and the beginning of Grade 1. Conclusions support existing concerns regarding the variability in the quality and quantity of assessment materials within and across programs as well as concerns about whether the materials lend themselves to progress monitoring purposes at 2-week intervals for students who are struggling readers. Second, recommendations are made for the development of progress monitoring tools that are concise, easy for teachers to use, and that provide clear guidelines regarding the use of progress monitoring data to drive instruction. Accordingly the recent development of a progress monitoring tool that parallels the Texas Primary Reading Inventory (TPRI), which is an assessment tool used in approximately 95% of Texas Reading First schools was discussed.

Mathematics Screening and Progress Monitoring at First Grade: Implications for Responsiveness to Intervention

The predictive utility of screening measures for forecasting math disability (MD) at the end of 2nd grade and the predictive and discriminant validity of math progress-monitoring tools were assessed. Participants were 225 students who entered the study in 1st grade and completed data collection at the end of 2nd grade. Screening measures were Number Identification/Counting, Fact Retrieval, Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) Computation, and CBM Concepts/Applications. For Number Identification/Counting and CBM Computation, 27 weekly assessments were also collected. MD was defined as below the 10th percentile at the end of 2nd grade on calculations and word problems. Logistic regression showed that the 4-variable screening model produced good and similar fits in accounting for MD—calculation and MD—word problems. Classification accuracy was driven primarily by CBM Concepts/Applications and CBM Computation; CBM Concepts/Applications was the better of these predictors. CBM Computation, but not Number Identification/Counting, demonstrated validity for progress monitoring.

An Evaluation of Curriculum-Based Measurement of Mathematics Word Problem—Solving Measures for Monitoring Third-Grade Students' Mathematics Competence

The purpose of this study was to examine the tenability of a curriculum-based mathematical word problem-solving (WPS) measure as a progress-monitoring tool to index students' rate of growth or slope of achievement over time. Participants consisted of 58 third-grade students, who were assessed repeatedly over 16 school weeks. Students were measured once every 2 weeks on WPS and once each week on mathematics computation. Results provided corroborating data across the two measures and support the adequacy of the WPS measure for monitoring student progress. Findings of slope data are also discussed in terms of mathematical grade-level status (low-performing, LO; average-performing, AV).

Learning to Write: Progress-Monitoring Tools for Beginning and At-Risk Writers

Learning to Write: Progress-Monitoring Tools for Beginning and At-Risk Writers

Student progress monitoring tool using treeview

In this paper, we present an extensible visualization tool that is being used in a web-based closed laboratory system. The goal of this project is to provide a tool for both students and teachers that can help trace deficiencies in a student's understanding back to individual concepts. This visualization tool has been developed by using the tree abstract data type (ADT) which is built from the concepts to be covered in a lab, lecture, or course. Once the tree ADT is built, each node can be associated with different entities such as student performance, class performance, or lab development. Using this tool, a teacher can help students by discovering concepts that need additional lecture coverage, and students may discover concepts for which they need to spend additional time working on reinforcement exercises.

FROM TELE-LABORATORY TO E-LEARNING IN AUTOMATION CURRICULA AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PISA

The design and development of computational infrastructures supporting existing tele-laboratory experiences in the field of automation and robotics are described. The goal of the activity is to provide a proper e-learning environment in which remote laboratory experiences are integrated in a coherent way. The addition of e-learning features, as self-assessment and progress monitoring tools, asynchronous tutor interaction, authentication, evaluation and follow-up features, has led also to the modification of the original tele-laboratory set-up.