From Screening to Progress Monitoring

Progress monitoring is a different type of assessment than screening, and it is important to understand the relationship between them. The key features of screening and progress monitoring are shown in the table below.

Screening data plays a role in progress monitoring because a student’s score on a screening measure helps to indicate the best progress measure. Not all FastBridge screening assessments can be used for progress monitoring. For these assessments, Illuminate Education recommends a different tool for progress monitoring. In other situations, a measure might be used for both screening and progress monitoring.

In some cases, the same measure might be used, but at a different level. If a student scores very low on a screening assessment, this might suggest that the student needs to participate in an intervention for more basic skills first. Such a situation could indicate that a progress measure matched to a lower level skill is needed. For example, you may use a measure from earlyReading to progress monitor a student who scored very low on CBMreading.

In order to know which students might need progress monitoring and which progress measure to use, teachers and teams need to review the universal benchmark screening data first. This often begins by looking at the Group Screening Report to learn which students scored below the benchmark and how the percentile rankings of students in each class compare with school and district norms.  

Another report that could be helpful is the Group Growth Report. This report includes information about students’ scores from multiple screening periods as well as the actual gains each student made over time; however this report won't contain growth information unless at least two screening periods have data.

A tool for helping teachers identify which FastBridge assessment would be the best progress measure for a student is the Screening to Intervention (s2i) report. This report is available for reading and math and includes information about each student’s specific instructional needs. It also identifies the recommended progress measure.

Identifying Students Who Need Assistance

When reviewing student screening data to identify which students need additional instruction, it is important to understand that when more than 20% of students in a class, school, or grade have scores putting them at some level of risk, school leaders need to think carefully about how to provide supports for struggling students.  In any given school, it is expected that about 20% of the students will need some additional instruction. This percentage reflects that fact that students might have school difficulties for many reasons, including frequent school changes, differences in instruction, and disabilities. Although there are many reasons that students could struggle in school, when the number of struggling students is greater than 20% of those enrolled, it is unlikely that the school will be able to provide individualized or small group interventions for all struggling students. This is because doing so requires many more staff and other resources than available in most public schools.  

When more than 20% of students in a class, grade, or school have screening scores indicating some or high risk, it is likely that the best solution is for the teachers to focus on changing the Tier 1 core instruction first. Core instruction includes the materials and methods used to teach all students in the general education classroom. Such instruction needs to be effective for at least 80% of all students before additional interventions be provided for struggling students.

FastBridge reports include symbols that help teachers know which students might need additional instruction. The two primary symbols used to indicate which students might be at risk are exclamation marks:

• ! = some risk
• !! = high risk

When looking at a FastBridge screening report, the teacher should consider if the data in the report makes sense when compared to other information about the student’s current skills. Illuminate Education endorses a multi-method, multi-informant process of identifying which students need assistance.  

After comparing the screening data with other sources of information, and confirming which students need intervention, the next step is to select both the intervention and progress measure for each student. Those students at some risk (!) are closer to meeting the benchmark goal and can often reach the end-of-year benchmark goal with a less intensive intervention. These students can usually be progress monitored at grade level.

Other students, particularly those at high risk (!!), generally need more intensive intervention in order to catch up and reach the grade level benchmark. Sometimes these students can be progress monitored in grade level material, but when their skills are very far behind, they might need off grade level monitoring. This means that they complete weekly progress measures that are matched to skills from a lower grade level, until they catch up far enough to move into weekly monitoring on grade level. More information about off grade level monitoring can be found in the Knowledge Base.