AIMSweb

The National Center on Student Progress Monitoring, funded by the US Department of Education Office of Special Education recently posted results of its first review of tools for use in frequent progress monitoring that meet scientific standards.

According to its web page (www.studentprogress.org), "the Center's mission is to provide technical assistance to states and districts and disseminate information about progress monitoring practices proven to work in different academic content areas (Gr. K-5)."

As part of its charge, the Center has been given responsibility to:

• Raise knowledge and awareness by forming partnerships and communicating with States, districts, associations, technical assistance providers, institutions of higher education, and other interested groups
• Provide implementation support for using and sustaining proven progress monitoring practices to States and districts
• Provide for national dissemination by developing resources and supporting on-going information sharing through advanced web services, regional meetings, and a national conference.

To accomplish its second objective, progress monitoring tools were evaluated according to the degree to which they met seven criteria derived from the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing developed by the Joint Committee appointed by the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the American Psychological Association (APA), and the National Council on Measurement Used in Education (NCMUE) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ( IDEA). Each progress monitoring tool that was submitted by publishers against these seven standards, (1) sufficient number of alternate forms with evidence of equal difficulty, (2) rates of improvement specified, (3) Benchmarks specified, (4) evidence of improved student learning or teacher planning, (5) sensitivity to student improvement, (6) reliability, and (7) validity, was judged independently by two of six members of the National Technical Review Panel. Complete details regarding this process are described on the Center's web page.

Two AIMSweb Curriculum-Based Measures of Reading (R-CBM and Maze) fully met these seven standards.Two AIMSweb Curriculum-Based Measures, Spelling (S-CBM) and Early Literacy met six of the seven standards. S-CBM and the AIMSweb Early Literacy Measures had a sufficient number of alternate forms (at least 35 per grade) to meet the standard for numbers of alternate forms. Additionally, both S-CBM and the AIMSweb Early LIteracy Measures were constructed using identical test construction strategies described in the professional literature. Those test construction strategies produced testing practices that were reliable. Because the S-CBM and AIMSweb Early Literacy Measures are relatively new, no SPECIFIC information on the alternate form reliabilities were available at the time of the review. Edformation will supply this information to the Center in the next review period. In addition, Edformation will submit Curriculum-Based Measurement tools in Mathematics Computation, Early Numeracy, and Written Expression for review. Click the link below to access the page showing how AIMSweb measures met the standards.

View Resultsclick

AIMSweb users who would like to contribute to understanding and documenting alternate form reliability, sensitivity to improvement, and validity of all AIMSweb measures are encouraged to contact Edformation's Chief Scientist, Mark R. Shinn, Ph.D. who can assist in the design, completion, data analysis, and production of results. We can assist in designing and carrying out investigations that would meet professional standards and provide you a publication avenue for your results in the appendices of AIMSweb Administration and Scoring manuals.