Using Intermittent CBM Progress Monitoring

Nothing distinguishes specialfrom general education asmuch as special education’sattention to students as indi-viduals. D. Fuchs and Fuchs (1995) described individualized education as the “signature feature of effective special education practice ” (p. 528). Four essential attributes distin-guish special education: (a) identifying goals that address educational needs specific to an individ-ual with a disability, (b) designing and imple-menting instruction formulated specially for that individual and those goals, (c) monitoring and evaluating the individual’s progress toward the goals, and (d) adjusting instruction when the in-dividual’s progress is unsatisfactory. For special education to have integrity, both legally and con-ceptually, all four attributes are essential—and they are central features of the individualized education program (IEP). Monitoring progress for purposes of instruc-tional decision making may be the key ingredient of the IEP; it functions as a self-correcting mech-anism for imperfect planning and instruction. This research sought answers to three fundamen-tal questions regarding the amount of measure-ment needed to obtain valid estimates of reading growth: Is validity of growth estimates degraded by measuring progress less often, by minimizing the number of scores per measurement occasion