Academic Screening in Middle School: How well do AIMSweb Measures of Oral Reading Fluency, and NWEA Measures of Academic Progress, Predict Future Performance on State Exams

The current study examined the diagnostic accuracy of two common screening assessments in reading, Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) and Reading-Curriculum Based Measurement (R-CBM), when used to predict end of the year performance on state tests in 8th grade. The sample consisted of 389 8th grade students enrolled in a school district in the Upper Midwest. Results of this study demonstrate that MAP was the better individual measure when assessing diagnostic accuracy. Further the combination of R-­CBM and MAP assessment results did not improve diagnostic accuracy when compared to MAP as a single screening assessment. However, these results suggest using only MAP to screen students in 8th grade may result in many students being misidentified as not at-risk when using publisher recommended cut-off scores. Future middle school research could explore different cut-scores for defining "at-risk" students or more liberal approaches when using a combined screening model