In MTSS, what is the purpose of progress monitoring?

• A. To track progress toward goals and fidelity of implementation.
• B. To assign grades.
• C. To evaluate teacher performance.
• D. To identify discipline issues.

Answer: (A)

Progress monitoring in MTSS is about collecting and examining data over time to see if a student is making progress toward their goals and whether the intervention is being delivered as intended. By using brief, repeated measures that align with the targeted skill, you can track trends and determine if the current support is effective. If the data show steady improvement, you continue with the plan; if not, you adjust the intervention’s intensity, strategy, or duration, or consider a different approach. This data-driven decision-making component is what links progress to both student outcomes and how faithfully the instruction is implemented.

This isn’t about assigning grades, evaluating a teacher’s overall performance, or pulling disciplinary data. Those are separate processes. The essence of progress monitoring is to answer: is the student progressing toward the goal, and is the intervention being implemented with fidelity?