What is Progress Monitoring?

Student progress monitoring is the ongoing, repeated measurement of student performance used to inform instruction for individual students in both general and special education settings, particularly in grades K–8. It provides educators with timely data to evaluate student growth and instructional effectiveness.

The primary purpose of progress monitoring is to determine the effectiveness of an intervention over time. Classworks uses Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) probes for identified students as part of the tiered intervention process. These probes may also serve as documentation for MTSS/RtI decision-making or as supporting data for special education referral and evaluation.

CBM probes include multiple, equivalent forms that assess the same skills at the same level of difficulty. Because the probes are curriculum-independent and equated, they provide a reliable measure of student progress across administrations. This design ensures that gains reflect true skill growth and allows educators to monitor both progress and retention of learning over time.

What are Curriculum-Based Measures (CBMs)?CBM stands for Curriculum-Based Measurement. It is the process by which a student’s general learning is measured, with repeated administrations of equated probes. When used for progress monitoring, Curriculum-Based Measurements should have the following characteristics:

1. Brief and easy to administer
2. Assess the same way each time, either a specific content domain or a sample of the year-long grade-level curriculum
3. Administered the same way every time
4. Incorporate automatic tests of retention and generalization
5. Offer reliable and valid scores
6. Have 20 parallel forms
7. Scores are graphed for teachers to use to make decisions about instructional programs and teaching methods for each student
8. Highly prescriptive and standardized
9. CBM measures any instructional approach, making no assumptions about instructional hierarchy for determining measurement.

CBMs in Classworks

Classworks offers two types of CBM Progress Monitoring:

• Curriculum Sampling
• Domain Based

CBM is the gold-standard accepted methodology for progress monitoring.

Within Classworks, both types of progress monitoring automatically inform the student’s individualized learning intervention.

Teachers can easily choose between these two approaches for each student when they activate progress monitoring within Classworks.