What does good progress monitoring assess?

Good progress monitoring is specifically designed to assess the reading skills that are critical for students to achieve proficiency at their grade level. This involves regularly measuring a student’s understanding and abilities in areas such as decoding, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary. By gathering data on these essential skills, educators can make informed instructional decisions, identify students who may need additional support, and track overall growth over time.

Emotional intelligence, while important for overall student development, does not directly relate to academic skills in reading and is not the focus of progress monitoring. Assessing teacher performance is also outside the scope of what progress monitoring aims to accomplish, as it centers more on student outcomes rather than evaluation of teaching methods. Additionally, while the quality of learning materials can impact student engagement and learning, it is not the primary focus of progress monitoring, which is directed toward measuring individual student progress in reading.