Progress Monitoring for Special Education

Progress monitoring for special education is essential to ensure that every student meets their educational goals. Each student is different, so their goals may be adjusted to ensure they are specific, measurable, relevant to the timeframe, and realistic for them.

How Progress Monitoring for Special Education Works

To accurately check a student’s progress, they need to be evaluated. Before setting educational goals specific to each student, it's essential to determine their current performance. Once the goals are set, the student will need to be regularly monitored so that improvements can be tracked and areas that need further focus can be identified.

Use the measurements provided in the progress reports to adjust the teaching methods used. This way, every student with additional needs will have a tailored plan to help ensure they can thrive.

Progress Monitoring Methods

Everyone has their preferred method of tracking a student’s progress. Some of the more common options include:

• Time sampling for on-task behavior tracking
• Checklists to monitor functional abilities
• Decoding skill tests, such as oral reading
• Written anecdotal records to note any behavioral changes
• Frequency counts to track how often and how many times behaviors occur

However, simple observation may be one of the most reliable methods of checking progress. Often, students are more comfortable going over things one-on-one with a teacher, as they may demonstrate behaviors and needs that can get hidden in a classroom full of competing needs.

The frequency of data collection depends heavily on the student’s individual needs. Formal IEP progress monitoring should be completed a minimum of three times a year, but may be needed more frequently if the needs are unique and more supports need to be added.

How to Create a Progress Monitoring Plan

Each student with additional needs should have their own goals and a progress monitoring plan that is specific to them. The plan should be concise and include all the student's basic data alongside:

Goals: Any educational goals and objectives must be included in the plan. It is vital to have a solid understanding and working knowledge of each student’s current abilities.

Progress Measurements: Decide which methods will objectively measure the student’s educational progress. This section should also include the frequency of monitoring with a timeline for trying the measures, reviewing and making adjustments.

Responsibilities: Someone will need to be designated responsible for collecting any data (including observations) about the student’s progress. This person should be assigned early on, and any training necessary should be provided. This person needs to be consistent throughout the year to build a good relationship with the student.

Once collected, the progress monitoring measurements can be examined by those responsible for adjusting the methods used to teach the student. You can find the legal requirements for an IEP plan here.

The Benefits of Progress Monitoring

Staying abreast of a student’s progress has several benefits for teachers, students and parents. These include:

Appropriate instruction: When teachers understand the student’s current abilities and goals, they can work with them to reach their goals.

Maintain records: Every school must keep track of student progress to provide accountability.

Better communication: When discussing a student’s progress with the student’s parents, it’s easier to have the records on hand. Tactical examples provide an assurance of the student’s progress.

Better decisions: It’s easier to make decisions regarding teaching methods when progress reports indicate which methods work best with each particular child. Don’t forget to show growth toward academic achievement!

Improved testing: Every student deserves fair testing practices. Progress monitoring, along with the correct supports and testing attributes, can provide the necessary information to ensure testing is reasonable.

How is Progress Data Used?

Progress monitoring provides a lot of data to go through. This should be used to identify which students need more tiered support or different teaching methods. Administrators and teachers can analyze the data and determine what can be done to improve each student’s educational experience and to identify any trends within and between cohorts.

It’s helpful to use a variety of monitoring tools to ensure success and provide a more comprehensive view of the student’s progress. It’s also essential to set clear goals and objectives. Otherwise, it’s impossible to see if the student is progressing sufficiently.

While progress monitoring is valuable, everyone involved should be kept apprised of any changes. Parents, teachers, and the school administrator should regularly discuss progress reports and student supports. Everyone will be on the same page and know what to expect. Parents also play a major role in supporting their child’s educational progress at home and ensuring academic success and continual growth.

Using Progress Monitoring for Testing

Tests can be challenging for students with additional needs. To ensure everyone can take their tests with equity, schools need to provide accommodations in some cases. Special software may be used to track the necessary accommodations and to ensure any student who needs changes can still access the test.

TestHound is a test enablement tool developed by Education Advanced that ensures large-scale testing coordination while tracking any additional needs that the student has and any adaptations needed. This enables schools to provide what each student requires to be competitive in their testing.

Ready to improve testing for all students? Learn more about TestHound and Education Advanced today.

If your school is interested in new ways to improve the learning experience for children, you may also be interested in automating tasks and streamlining processes so that your teachers have more time to teach. Education Advanced offers a large suite of tools that may be able to help:

• Cardonex, our master schedule software helps schools save time on building master schedules. Many schools used to spend weeks using whiteboards to organize the right students, teachers, and classrooms into the right order so that students could graduate on time and get their preferred classes. However, Cardonex can now be used to automate this task and within a couple of days deliver 90% of student's first choice classes.
• Embarc, our curriculum mapping software, helps teachers quickly analyze whether or not their curriculum is aligned with state and national standards as well as share best practice curriculum plans with other teachers to reduce duplication and with parents to keep everyone up to date.
• Evaluation allows school administrators to efficiently document every step of the staff evaluation process, including walk-throughs, self-evaluations, supporting evidence, reporting and performance analytics.
• TestHound, our test coordination software, helps schools coordinate thousands of students across all state and local K-12 school assessments while taking into account dozens of accommodations (reading disabilities, physical disabilities, translations, etc.) for students.
• Pathways is a graduation tracking tool that allows administrators and counselors to create, track and analyze student graduation pathways to ensure secondary students are on track to graduate and build an educated, talented workforce for the future.