A Teacher’s Guide to Progress Monitoring: Track Goals to Refine Instruction for All Students

As new federal mandates require that schools help every child make progress, it’s more important than ever for teachers to collect data regularly, make data-based instructional decisions, and monitor student progress toward goals. This is the practical, teacher-friendly guide you need to harness the power of progress monitoring (PM) and uncover what is and isn’t working in your classroom.

You’ll start with a complete introduction to the fundamentals of progress monitoring, including why it’s a critical component of response to intervention (RTI) and multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS); how to use it in academic, behavioral, and functional settings; and how to support your teaching and assessment through task analysis. Then you’ll get real-world guidance on how to implement every key step in the PM process, from collecting data efficiently to making informed decisions about your instruction. To bring PM principles to life, chapter-long case studies take you inside five classrooms and show you how real teachers used progress monitoring to support their students’ academic and behavioral goals.

Ideal for educators in K-12 classrooms—but also applicable to preschool and transition programs—this urgently needed guide is your key to using PM to comply with federal mandates, refine your teaching, and help every learner achieve success.

LEARN HOW TO:

• Monitor student progress toward academic, behavioral/social, and functional goals
• Create clear, easy-to-read graphs of your data
• Analyze data to make the best, most informed instructional decisions
• Select evidence-based practices to accelerate your students’ progress
• Involve students with and without disabilities in monitoring their own progress
• Tailor PM to individual students’ strengths and needs
• Use PM to monitor progress toward IEP and 504 goals
• Manage your time and materials efficiently
• See the principles in action with five case studies written by special educators

 

PRACTICAL MATERIALS: Throughout the book, end-of-chapter exercises, visual examples, and handy downloadable forms give readers the tools they need to conduct effective progress monitoring in their own classrooms.

Jennifer N. Mahdavi has been a professor and teacher-educator at the university level for nearly 2 decades. She earned her doctorate in Special Education from the University of California, Riverside, and she is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA). Her expertise is in assessment, data-based intervention decisions, and behavior management. Building on 10 years of experience teaching elementary school, Dr. Mahdavi is committed to making the lives of individuals with disabilities better by bringing research to practice.

Rachel Folmer is a special education teacher for students with moderate to severe disabilities. She is entering her fourth year of teaching and has prior experience teaching and working as a paraprofessional at a local Non-Public School focusing on behavioral interventions. She is currently working toward her M.A. in Education at Sonoma State University, while simultaneously completing her courses and supervised experience in Behavioral Analysis through Florida Institute of Technology. Her current professional focus is becoming a BCBA specializing in behavioral interventions for children and adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Lejf Hansen has been a special education teacher for students with moderate to severe disabilities for four years. Prior to becoming a credentialed special educator, Lejf spent 14 years working as a substitute teacher in special and alternative education classrooms across Sonoma and Contra Costa Counties, and he worked with developmentally disabled young adults during his teen years through In Home Support Services and on the campuses of his junior high and high school.

Emily Hanson is a special education teacher for Healdsburg Unified School District. She has been teaching third, fourth, and fifth graders for 3 years. She loves learning and continuing to grow in order to best meet her students' needs.

Kaley Mounts is a special education teacher for students with moderate to severe disabilities at Lattice Educational Services, a Non-Public School focusing on behavioral interventions. She is currently in her fifth year teaching and her eighth year working in Non-Public Schools, and she is working to complete her M.A. in Special Education at Sonoma State University. Her professional focus is working with students with significant behavioral challenges, as well as working with students who have dual diagnoses of developmental disabilities and mental health issues.

Shahin Pamatmat, is currently a board member for the Schoolbox Project and an independent education consultant. A credentialed special educator in the State of California, his focus is providing equitable, post-secondary vocational opportunities for students with exceptionalities. Shahin's research interests include special education policy at the local, state, and federal level; virtual reality educational environments for individuals with moderate to severe disabilities; and using block-chain technology to rethink education funding models.