Progress Monitoring: Caveats and Concerns

School-based examples of progress monitoring, such as those presented in the School Examples section, are "real world" examples that represent current practices considered by most staff in their sites as "works in progress." In contrast, research studies may present a different picture of progress monitoring standards (see Research Examples). Schools considering adopting a responsiveness-to-intervention model should consider the following points when undertaking progress monitoring in conjunction with their RTI process.

To be effective, progress monitoring must directly match the curriculum. Many times, however, student progress monitored in the classroom is not matched to the curriculum, creating a situation in which progress monitoring results are not useful in judging the effectiveness of current instruction for individual students.

Though school-wide screening shares many of the same features as progress monitoring, they are two distinct components of an RTI model. Screening measures are implemented to quickly identify students who may be at risk by measuring their performance in the targeted academic area, whereas progress monitoring is a more complex assessment tool that determines both performance and growth in the relevant skill. Even though screening tools may be administered several times throughout the school year, performance on screening measures is not equivalent to progress monitoring in the general curriculum.