It's important that you do not attempt go back and "make up" missed progress monitoring weeks/forms
Trying to go back and collect data points for previous weeks is like taking the baby to the doctor's office and asking them to weigh the baby twice in order to see what the baby weighed a few weeks ago. It simply doesn't work and doesn't make sense. Here are the main reasons you shouldn’t administer progress monitoring from previously missed weeks:
- Takes away from instructional time
- Results in unusable data
- Doesn’t reflect progress (or lack of) towards the goal in the missed week.
- Skews the data
- May result in poor decisions about student progress or intervention effectiveness based on that data
- Could be considered falsification of data or unethical
It’s important to note that monitoring on a different day in the same week rather than the day it would normally be completed is acceptable.
There is no "ding" for missed progress monitoring
The real penalty is the risk to the student’s literacy outcomes. Weekly progress monitoring is required by ELI because making good decisions about the effectiveness of the intervention relies on consistent, frequent monitoring data to provide feedback on student progress. It takes around six data points to see a trend that you can use to predict whether the intervention will close the gap. If it looks like it won't, it may be time to intensify the intervention, or maybe decide that the intervention is a poor match with the child's needs. Perhaps it’s a consistently ineffective intervention that needs to be replaced if the majority of students aren’t closing the gap. The consequence of infrequent or irregular progress monitoring is the lack of data to ensure students have the opportunity to receive effective interventions that close the gap.
A missed week of progress monitoring collection due to circumstances beyond your control does happen occasionally. That is different from simply electing not to monitor for multiple weeks, resulting in many more weeks before you'll have evidence of the intervention's effectiveness. There needs to be a sense of urgency for the interventions to close the gap, and a sense of the scientist to understand when interventions are ineffective and shouldn't be used.
What to do if a week is missed
If a week, or more, of progress monitoring has been missed, there is no need to administer the missed weeks. Simply resume progress monitoring using the form for the current week. The Overdue label on the progress monitoring plan will be removed after two consecutive weeks of progress monitoring have been completed after a missed week..
While there is no requirement (or function) to mark the reason a student's progress monitoring was missed for state reporting, if you wish, you can make note of the absences. This offers clarification on the circumstance of the data gap when internal or external teams are reviewing student data. Here are the two best options for including notes about missed progress monitoring:
Add a note to the student's intervention plan in Student Success, Iowa’s MTSS data system. This function is available to staff on the intervention plan team and is a great way to communicate, as most of the data review/intervention effectiveness evaluation will occur in Iowa's Student Success.
Add a note in FastBridge during the next progress monitoring administration after the missed week(s). When used for teacher administered assessments, the notes will be included on the Progress Monitoring Report in FastBridge. This option is not available on computer administered assessments such as CBMmath CAP. FastBridge notes do not transfer to Student Success. See: Iowa: Using the ‘add note’ feature in screening or progress monitoring