What is the purpose of progress monitoring and which tools are commonly used?

• A. To determine response to intervention; tools include curriculum-based measurements, fluency probes, and rate/accuracy measures.
• B. To determine teacher performance.
• C. To diagnose mood disorders.
• D. To grade students.

Answer: (A)

Progress monitoring is used to determine how a student responds to intervention over time, so teachers can tell quickly whether the instruction is helping and adjust as needed. This approach, a hallmark of RTI, relies on frequent, data-driven checks that show growth or lack of growth across sessions rather than a one-time snapshot.

Common tools include curriculum-based measurements, which are brief tasks tied to the classroom curriculum and given regularly to track progress; reading fluency probes, often an oral reading fluency measure that records how many words a student reads correctly per minute to capture both rate and accuracy; and other simple rate/accuracy measures across domains such as math or writing. Together, these tools provide actionable feedback to guide instructional decisions, such as continuing with the current approach, increasing intensity, or trying a different intervention.

This approach isn’t about grading students, diagnosing mood disorders, or evaluating teacher performance, which explains why those options don’t fit the purpose of progress monitoring.