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1.  Progress monitoring is the frequent, ongoing assessment of a student's progress toward the goals of the intervention. Progress monitoring data should be collected for any intervention. The primary purpose of progress monitoring is to document changes in student outcome(s) to measure goal attainment

2. I remember vividly as a child in elementary school being pulled out of classes for many different reasons. One particularly had to do with my literacy. I was taken by a teacher once or twice a week, asked to do some work, and then returned to class. After a while a stopped going to that teacher. Of course, they never told me "Oh Trevor, you finally tested out or do need this help anymore." Looking back and knowing what I know now, it seems like the case.

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1. In special education, progress monitoring is when data is collected and evaluated to determine if a student is making academic progress; the result of this evaluation might inform a necessary change in instruction or tier or RTI.

2. As a K-12 student, I think that I might have been part of a program with progress monitoring in elementary school. I was in a program called "Special Friends", which I learned while in graduate school was a prevention and early intervention program to support students who might be at risk or who have already shown difficulties adjusting socially at school. When my family moved from the Bronx to the Hudson Valley, I believe I was the only Black student in my class in the first grade. To me, "Special Friends" was a time when I worked individually with a kind teacher, played games, and got candy – now, as a graduate student studying special education, I understand that progress monitoring was likely a component of the intervention and provided the educator that worked with me the necessary information to determine when I could stop going to the program.

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1. Progress Monitoring refers to the process of gathering information about an individuals responsiveness to intervention over a period of time. It is important because it informs interventionists about the extent to which the individual is responding to the instruction. Based on the data, the educator can tailor their instruction more intentionally.

2. Yes, I do recall times when I was subjected to progress monitoring as a student in high school though it was not in the context of Special Education. I was in an English language learning program and once in while students would be pulled in the hall way to be assessed one-on-one by the teacher. Teacher used this data to decide who needed additional support and to identify for whom current methods of instruction whether effective. So, in many ways it was similar the PM discussed in this module.

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Progress Monitoring is a collection and analyzation of student data to track their performance over a period of time . We get to compare students progress to where they are expected to be and monitor if any students are facing any challenges with the traditional education model. This helps us make decisions on whether any particular students may be in need of additional supports through the implementation of RTI.

I definitely can remember progress monitoring throughout my earlier education years. Although I may not have understood what was happening at the time there would be ways we were tested on our progress throughout the year. looking at the work we did with the module I'm wondering when we would have spelling tests every week if this was a form of progress monitoring. While students may perceive this as just a routine it is actually providing important information for the teacher on how the students are progressing throughout the year.

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In any general education or special education setting, progress monitoring measures students' progress in academic, behavioral, emotional areas after setting up an initial benchmark of students' current performance and expected aim line. Progress monitoring is an ongoing process to monitor students' progress in comparison to aim line and other students' performance in the class. Progress monitoring substantiates students' academic and non-academic performance and achievement along with visual data for students and educators and other professionals, if any. This data then helps students and teachers alike to set their goals based on the trend line of progress. For progress monitoring, we can collect data from many formal (such as tests, CBM) and informal sources (such as, observations, task analysis, portfolio), which provides a robust collection and resources of using tools to monitor students' progress by themselves and their teachers.

I grew up in Bangladesh. In my middle school and ninth and tenth grade level, I was evaluated pretty much by using two tools. One tool was the traditional quarterly tests at grade level. Another tool was using maintenance of a school diary regularly. Using diary as a progress monitoring tool, school maintained my attendance, class participation, homework for each subject area. The class teachers recorded those reports in the diary. The diary was treated somewhat as a good progress report in day-to-day academic and non-academic activities. I think this diary keeping stayed us focused on study and other daily activities even though it was sometimes stressful. In my 11th and 12th grade level, I was in different schools. There used three tools to monitor our progress in academic and non-academic areas. The academic progress areas were evaluated and monitored by quiz and traditional tests. Non-academic part was monitored by student counsellor in a very restrict way that resolved many behavioral issues and helped focusing on study. Even though the progress monitoring tools were not too formal like I know now in this course, it has similar implications to my academic and non-academic accomplishments back in my secondary schools.

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Progress monitoring is the process of collecting, graphing and analyzing student data in a specific area or skill. It is important because it tracks student performance to see if and to what extent students are developing skills and making progress over time. Progress monitoring can also help inform instructional practices and decisions such as which intervention is the most effective for a student.

The only experience with progress monitoring that I can recall as a student from my own K-12 school experience were report cards. There were times that I accompanied my parents at parent-teacher conferences in elementary school to review my report cards. I remember that my teacher would review my work samples and grades in each subject area, as a way to document and discuss my academic performance, but there was also a section of the report card for conduct, social skills and classroom participation that had a different rating system (satisfactory, unsatisfactory, etc.). This section was used to compare behavior and skill development throughout the school year and to identify if support was needed in a given area.

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Progress monitoring is the systematic tracking of student growth through frequent curriculum based measures and other informal assessments. It is important to monitor student progress because it helps track student progress toward specific goals and help to determine if an educational program is effective.

From my schooling experience, I can remember progress monitoring most prominently in the earlier grades of about first through fourth grade. For math, we would have fact fluency practice to ensure we have mastery of multiplication facts. Another activity I remember is weekly spelling tests that would assess that we are able to spell a certain number of grade level vocabulary words. In reading we were broken into leveled guided reading groups where we would be measured on both fluency and comprehension.

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Progress monitoring systematically measures growth toward a specific goal for a specific student.

As a child in central Iowa, I did not experience any progress monitoring, but my mother was a teacher, so she spoke with my teachers on a consistent basis. Although I had undiagnosed high-functioning autism, I did very well in school academically - I remember squinting to see the chalkboards and struggling socially, though, and none of that was addressed.

In Iowa, we did take the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, and that was a big deal. My classmates and I felt stressed about the bubble sheet tests every year, but I felt better about myself as a person when I scored in the 90s. Some of my classmates scored lower, or very low, and I wondered how they felt - their parents did not seem to complain about it too much, but some of the classmates resented my scores and grades throughout school, or some people thought that I should have done even better when my physical health started to suffer.

From what I hear, education has evolved immensely for students with exceptionalities in Iowa - I am sure that they do progress monitoring in the schools, since people care a lot about education, especially in small schools where the communities have been in tact for about 150 years, and people take sincere interest in the children.

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Progress monitoring is an assessment type, that can be both formal and informal, in which data is collected about how a student is progressing toward a goal. The goal could be a learning goal or a behavior that the child is trying to master. I believe when I was in elementary, probably 1-3rd grade I was progress monitored in reading. We all were assigned reading levels, and given books to match the level each week, and our teacher would talk with us to see if we had mastered the reading, and they would then assign another book of the same level (or higher or lower) depending on how they felt we were progressing.

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Progress monitoring is systematic monitoring of student progress to determine whether something in a program needs to be changed. They are usually completed frequently and consist of CBMs (Curriculum-based Measures). Progress monitoring is important because it can help teachers realize when a student needs help right away rather than waiting for a standardized test that they may take only twice a year. This ensures that interventions can be implemented quickly and provide the best possible outcomes.

When I was in high school, I had an Algebra teacher who would have us do a weekly worksheet to determine whether we would be ready for the module quiz and then test. If we did not show our work and have the correct answers, we would be required to sign up for a one-on-one session with her to review before moving forward. We had charts with our grades made that we got to keep seeing our progress. I think this was a fantastic idea and probably the only reason I was able to do so well in her class and the math classes I took after her.

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Progress monitoring is an essential part of the RIT process that involves the systematic monitoring of student progress to determine if changes to a program are warranted. What makes it so essential is that it uses the relevance of informal assessments and the concrete reliability of formal assessments to continuously evaluate the students performance in their constantly shifting instructional setting.
When I was in early kindergarten, I remember having my progress monitored regarding my speech and motor skills. According to an eye witness (aka my mother), I had difficulty with certain phonetics (i.e. f- vs. th- sounds). I also struggled with my walking, defaulting to a duck-footed, or out-toeing, gate. I remember being taken out of class for speech pathology and occupational therapy, and would have my goals monitored and updated outside of those sessions.

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Progress monitoring is a type of systemic monitoring to determine if the student needs to change programs. Data collection for progress monitoring is completed frequently, such as weekly or bi-weekly.

A few years ago, I found my K-12 school records and realized I was placed in an ESL class. Looking back, I remember struggling with communicating to adults, but wasn't sure why. In kindergarten, I was taken out of the general class every week or so for some time to work on my reading comprehension and oral skills. I remember joining ESL classes after the school year started and it didn't last the entire year.

In this situation, the progress monitoring helped special education teachers decide whether or not it was fitting for me to stay in ESL classes or program. Without progress monitoring, I may have stayed in the ESL program for longer which would have affected the goals I could have achieved in reading comprehension and oral skills.

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Progress monitoring is a systematic process to see if the interventions are successful. It is important to have informal/formal progress monitoring because most of the standardized test given every 3 months or so and if those tests are only measure to check students' progress, we are basically waiting for them to fail and losing time.

Only part I remember for progress monitoring is quizzes/exams. I don't really remember other assessment methods to check on my understanding. In my Physics class, I do my own RTI with my students. There is a weekly quiz but also we have worksheets, projects etc. I check not just for completion of worksheet but how students solve the problems. If I see that there is misconception or proof of misunderstanding, I keep that student during lunch period for my lunch and learn activity. If there are more than 5 students with same mistake, I do a review session and check for understanding again.
After every quiz, I hold Lunch and Learn sessions where students can visit me in my room and work on problems again to see if they can find their mistakes, if not, I reteach the content and have them try one more time. Once they show mastery in that topic, I increase their quiz grade. It's win-win

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Progress monitoring is a type of assessment (both formal and informal) where student learning is evaluated on a regular basis to provide an accurate portrayal of the student's growth towards goal over time.

Truthfully speaking, I'm really struggling to remember any progress monitoring that took place throughout my K-12 schooling. There must have been some, but I'm assuming it was done in a discrete manner. What I do remember are the standardized tests that I took in 3rd, 5th, 8th and then every year after that). That seems to be what my school was focusing on. I have a vague memory of maybe some. type of reading and spelling progress monitoring test that would place me in a reading group and check my spelling progress (although this may be a false memory that I'm now creating!) Of course, I think progress monitoring is an incredibly important thing that teachers should do.

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Progress monitoring is important, especially in the form of informal assessments, because this best allows teachers to track a student's progress when compared to their same-aged peers. This also allows teachers to see how students are progressing on an individual basis when comparing baseline performance to performance over a period of time. Informal assessments for progress monitoring can be tailored to a specific student need, and can be modified in order to best assess an individual student's progress with regard to their specific goals. When I think of progress monitoring experiences I had as an elementary school student, I think of incentivized reading tests that corresponded with a book of choice. These tests were optional and measured different levels of reading fluency and comprehension. Taking these tests were incentivized via a point system- higher performance on tests for higher-level books awarded more points. Students could exchange these points for various prizes throughout the year, and progress was tracked and monitored via an electronic system that teachers could reference. These tests were optional and while they were not entirely equitable in that students that did not enjoy reading or performed well on reading tests did not have this form of progress monitoring, I do think that there was less anxiety and pressure for young students surrounding this kind of token economy form of assessment.

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Progress monitoring is taking notes of the progress a student is making on a SMART goal. It first determines how progress will be evaluated-a concrete and preconceived task, result, or behavior. Through multiple observations this data is collected and analyzed. You look for trends, abnormalities, etc. Students are often asked to do this on large assignments but self-evaluating their progress through the established steps until the assignment is completed.

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Describe what progress monitoring is and why it is important?

Progress monitoring is the practice of collecting data on student performance using assessments on a continuous basis to determine how the student is doing.  In regards to RtI, progress monitoring is used to determine if the student is responding to instruction and instructional modification, or if the student needs additional support, via Tier 2 or Tier 3.

Think back to your own K-12 schooling experiences. Do you recall any experiences with progress monitoring as a student? If yes, please explain. If not, please describe if you think participating in progress monitoring would have assisted you as a student and why.

I don’t recall having experiences with progress monitoring as a student.  I was in elementary school in the early 1990s and graduated high school in 2001.  I wish that this type of monitoring had been around.  I experienced a few traumatic events by the age I was 10 and my dissociation became very problematic by the time I was in college.  I often wonder if this had been flagged as a behavior problem, if I would have received the type of counseling and help that would have saved many years of shame and suffering.  When I transitioned out of ESL, I was placed in a G&T class, but I felt that the assignments were not relevant to my experiences and though I received high grades, I did a lot of going through the motions, which I think contributed to disengagement and dissociation.  I think it would have been such a huge help for me to have someone realize that this was not typical for me.  That would have meant that there may have been someone to reach out to my family as well, which would also have flagged that we were really struggling, which would have been a huge help.  Not being from this country, we were never aware of any type of assistance.  I think this is a huge reason why I do tend to be hypervigilant with my students SEL needs.  Though as an emergent teacher, I need to learn how to discern between responsibilities that fall on me as the teacher, and what to pass on to the school social worker.

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What progress monitoring is and why it is important:

Progress monitoring is ongoing assessment over a period of time, with careful attention to any interventions tried, specific areas of strength, and specific areas of challenge. Data is collected both informally and formally, and must be interpreted based on valid methods of evaluation. SMART goals are a helpful element of progress monitoring, as it helps practitioners define progress and find more objective ways to determine the quality of progress being made.

Progress monitoring is important because it helps identify if the instruction the student is receiving, and any interventions in place for that student, are working. If they aren’t working, monitoring creates opportunities to understand why, or what aspects may be more effective than others. This evaluation is done on an ongoing basis, enabling those instructing students to be more agile and to shift sooner, rather than waiting until critical learning opportunities have been missed.

Did I participate in progress monitoring? How might it have assisted me and why?

In addition to being in school in the 80s and 90s, before current methods of progress monitoring were established, my mom and I moved constantly across state lines and did not have consistent teachers or curriculums until high school.

Progress monitoring would likely have helped me significantly. In some grades I was a failing student who couldn’t (or refused to) meet the academic standards. In others, I excelled and was evaluated for placement in gifted classrooms. I even scored quite poorly on SATs but excelled with high honors in college. Handling these kinds of tasks, such as picking the best answer from a set of answers that can all be debated due to nuance, is still a skill I have not fully mastered, and still presents challenges for me in collaboration and work. Progress monitoring may have helped identify my specific challenges and strengths, and enabled teachers to help me form skills that would have helped me then and now.

That said, I’m not sure how progress monitoring might work for children like me, as it seems to rely heavily on stability. Has anyone experienced trying to implement these techniques with transient students?

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Yaalieth Simpson: Grades were the primary way of progress monitoring when I was a student. In addition to report cards which recorded those grades, there was the Stamford achievement tests to tracks students in each grade and make statewide comparisons. It primarily assessed academic grade performance. This type of progress monitoring was a great way of measuring achievement, however, a student's performance was also un-intentionally tracked behavior and attendance. Not everyone was able to sit for the test due to environmental or behavioral issues that were out of the student' direct control.

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Progress monitoring is a way to track student progress toward an area that has been identified as an area to work on for the individual student throughout an intervention. This could be an academic related area and/or behavioral area. Different professionals in the school can monitor a student’s progress: the general education teacher, interventionists, a special education teacher, etc. Progress monitoring is important because it helps us to analyze whether or not a student is making progress from the intervention and how much progress they are/aren’t making. It helps the team to make further decisions (e.g., to maintain the current intervention, to discontinue the intervention, to increase to Tier III for more intense intervention, to recommend a special education evaluation).

When I was in elementary school, maybe 2nd or 3rd grade, I was in a small intervention type group for reading. This was in the early 90s, so RtI was not something that was yet federally mandated. I remember meeting in the group a few times, but don’t remember exactly how often. I know they were using progress monitoring to track my reading fluency because I remember having to read from booklets and being timed. I am not sure if they deemed my fluency as on the cusp (“good enough”) and maybe that’s why I didn’t have to stay in the group long. Throughout school, my fluency has always been on the slower side and I was very self conscious of finishing tests last because of how slow I read. I would also have to reread passages several times to make sure I understood everything. I think that being in the group I was in felt odd, but fun because they tried to entice us to work by playing games afterward. I think if they had had access to the fluency interventions like many schools where I’ve worked, that would have helped me more.

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Progress monitoring is a way in which to track student performance and progression of skills over time. This is an important part of schooling because it shows what students learn, and what they still need to learn, and can provide insights into our students. This is helpful for ALL students and can manifest itself in various ways: pre/ post assessments, formative assessments, observations, conversations, and more. Progress monitoring is also helpful through the special education lens to ensure students are improving and meeting their goals.

In my schooling experience, I remember taking checkpoint assessments in math class. The teacher would administer a pre assessment, a checkpoint halfway through the unit, and then a post assessment in order to monitor student learning. Other than that, I can not recall many other ways. I think progress monitoring would have assisted me because it is a way to actively engage the student in their own learning. By being a part of progress monitoring and making students aware of their progress, students take ownership of their learning and can see their growth or areas that need more work.

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Progress monitoring is measuring a student's performance over time using a variety of assessments. It is used to track an individual student's progress towards a specific goal, and we can compare their performance to that of their classmates to determine if they are progressing at similar rates. Progress monitoring benefits both teachers and students because it gives us information on if current instructional methods are suitable for our students or if they may benefit from additional instruction or other changes.

In my own K-12 experience, I took the NY state assessments in elementary and middle school, which were formal measures of my progress. I also remember having to read passages to my teachers that they would assess when I was a younger student. I feel like progress monitoring was more common in my experience when I was younger, and when I was older, I was typically assessed through large exams and projects that culminated units and there were few opportunities for my progress to be measured throughout those units.

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Progress monitoring is the observation then the collection of data to determine how a student has progressed towards the mastering of a skill or task. This process involves an informal assessment of a student to discover where a student may be struggling within a subject or concept. Once it is discovered, an intervention is then presented to improve the acquisition of the necessary skills to be deemed proficient. As the intervention is delivered and advances, the student’s progress is tracked, or monitored, to determine the success of the student. It is important to monitor a student’s progress so that there is evidence of whether an intervention has worked, and if there may be a need to further, more formally, evaluate a student. When a student’s progression displays a positive trend, the intervention and student, are deemed successful, whereas if the data were to illustrate a negative trend, the intervention and student may need to be evaluated for more appropriate measures.

As a primary school student, I recall tracking our behaviors in the classroom. Disruptive behaviors, like talking out of turn or not sitting in our seat, were tracked using a “traffic light” system. The system utilized popsicle sticks with the colors green, yellow, and red. Green represented good behavior, yellow illustrated that a warning was given, and red indicated that disruptive behaviors had occurred and would most likely result in a note being sent home. Everyone in the class had an index card pocket displayed at the front of the class which would hold the colored popsicle sticks, while the colored popsicle sticks were separated into jars next to the display. Each student would start with a green popsicle stick at the beginning of the day and as the day progressed anyone who received a warning was told to replace the green popsicle stick with a yellow one, and then, if needed, to replace the yellow with a red popsicle stick. This progress monitoring of student behavior encouraged students to behave well, so as not to be called to the front of the room to display to the rest of the class how your behavior had changed. For the most part, it kept us accountable for our own behavior, as well as each other’s, since the amount of “red” students would determine how much time we, as a class, would have to stay back from recess. It was beneficial for our teacher as well since she would just have to glance at the class behavior chart to determine who had behaviors and how disruptive the behaviors were. Admittedly, as the year progressed our behaviors did improve, but this is not something that I would recommend since this may influence students’ self-esteem.

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Progress Monitoring is the intentional use of both formal and informal assessment measures to track individual students' progress towards a specified goal. It is a valuable tool to determine what teaching methods are working or are not working to help particular students gain knowledge. As a student, I can recall timed tests as a use of "progress monitoring". I was terrible at them and would sob at the kitchen table nightly practicing. I also remember having guided reading levels and needing to read to the teacher one-on-one and then being given certain colored books to read independently. I remember feeling quite embarrassed at having a color lesser than the rest of the kids in my class. As a teacher, I tried to do progress monitoring in a way that would not make students feel too different from each other. I would have frequent talks with my students about how everyone has different strengths and weaknesses and we will all need different amounts of help at different times throughout the year. This allowed me to asses some kids in reading (for example), while other kids would meet with me during math for quick progress monitoring check ins.

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Yaalieth Simpson: Describe what progress monitoring is and why it is important?
It is important to track progress with monitoring whether it is done with report cards, RTI, standardized achievement tests or regents standardized tests because progress monitoring is scientifically based and requires all stakeholders to be accountable to each student to help them progress developmentally and academically.  Teachers, parents and the nation need to correctly assessing data to ensure that children's educational needs are met and students are getting the services the need to ensure that they perform on grade level behaviorally and academically.

Think back to your own K-12 schooling experiences. Do you recall any experiences with progress monitoring as a student? Yes, with report cards and city wide standardized achievement tests. If yes, please explain.  Standardized achievement tests were offered once a year and report cards were administered quarterly during the academic year. If not, please describe if you think participating in progress monitoring would have assisted you as a student and why. Progress monitoring was helpful to track student progress and measure accountability. However, I attended a private elementary school that my parents built for the community in which we resided. Almost as a rule, my parents seemed to only admit "exceptional and special needs" challenged individuals. Although it was a requirement to have children monitored periodically and scientifically assessed, she rejected the "labels" that public schools were required to use and categorize. She believed that everyone could learn with the right amount of caring and discipline.

Progress monitoring assists everyone, however, the right teacher and the right program can be a great fit for all children. Parents need to be very proactive and discover - beyond the data and testing - what school environment and what type of team will help my child truly achieve?1

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Progress Monitoring is a way to collect data on a student during different times in the school year to check academic progress. This educational tool is crucial for teachers to know if an intervention is working or not working and if the goal needs to be adjusted. It is also an excellent way to track IEP goals. As a student on an IEP throughout school, my teachers did a lot of progress monitoring throughout the school year. At the time, I did not know why I was given various tests in math and reading throughout the school year, but now it all makes sense as I am learning about progress monitoring. We were given quizzes or tests to check our understanding after a unit in my general education classes. But, when I was in special education classes, I remember there being a lot shorter assessments testing a variety of skills repeatedly throughout the school year.