5 key points for educators about curriculum-based measurement

When we first began working with curriculum-based measurement, or CBM, decades ago as school psychologists, we were drawn to its practicality. CBM was originally developed by Stan Deno and colleagues in the 1970s to help educators answer a question that is simple, important, and often difficult:

Is the student learning enough from the instruction we are providing?

That question remains at the heart of curriculum-based measurement today. What has changed is the range of decisions educators now use CBM data to make. CBMs are commonly used for universal screening, progress monitoring, intervention planning, evaluating core instruction, and supporting multi-tiered systems of support, or MTSS.

This expansion is exciting, but it can also create confusion. Schools have more measures, reports, and technology than ever before. Yet more data do not automatically lead to better decisions.

In this blog, we discuss five key points that educators should know about CBM today and explain how to keep CBM practical, purposeful, and focused on instruction. These insights are drawn from the new third edition of our book The ABCs of CBM: A Practical Guide to Curriculum-Based Measurement, published by Guilford Press.

What do we mean by curriculum-based measurement, or CBM?

CBM is a standardized approach to briefly and repeatedly sample student performance in important academic skills. CBMs are designed to be:

• Reliable and valid;
• Brief and efficient;
• Easy to administer and score;
• Sensitive to growth;
• Repeatable over time (3 times per year for screening, and weekly for progress monitoring); and
• Useful for instructional decisions.

Most measures take only a few minutes and produce a score that is easily graphed and reviewed over time.

The original goal of CBM was not simply to measure student performance. It was also to help educators determine whether students were benefiting from instruction and whether changes were needed. That connection to instruction should remain central—which brings us to our first key point.

Understanding CBM today: Key points for educators and leaders

1. CBM is about improving instruction.

One of the most important things to remember about CBM is that it is not simply a test, score, or report. It is easy for assessment to become something schools complete rather than something they use: Students are assessed, reports are generated, and teams review the results. Then everyone moves on to the next testing window.

But CBM was designed to be part of a decision-making process. The most important question is not: What score did the student receive? Instead, it is: What should we do because of this score?

In other words, CBM data should help educators decide whether to:

• Continue the current plan;
• Adjust the instructional focus;
• Increase intervention intensity;
• Change the intervention; and/or
• Gather more information.

Before administering a CBM, teams should know what question they are trying to answer, such as:

• Who may need additional support?
• Is our core instruction effective?
• Is an intervention producing enough growth?
• Does instruction match the student’s needs?

Clearly, different questions require different types of data:

1. Universal screening helps identify students who may be at risk and provides a broad view of outcomes across classrooms, grades, or schools.
2. Progress monitoring helps determine whether students receiving intervention are making sufficient growth and provides insights as to when diagnostic information should be collected to match instruction more closely with the student’s needs.

A measure that works well for one purpose may not be appropriate for another. This is why educators should focus on the question they are trying to answer rather than the test itself. When the question comes first, CBM becomes part of an instructional feedback loop and provides direction for what educators should do next, which brings us to our second point.

2. CBM is part of MTSS—but is not all of MTSS.

CBM has become closely associated with MTSS for a good reason: MTSS uses data to match assessment, instruction, and intervention resources. This is done as a system at both the group and individual student levels.

At Tier 1, CBM data can help teams ask:

• How effective is core instruction?
• Are students making sufficient progress?
• Are outcomes improving for all groups?
• Who may need additional support?

At Tiers 2 and 3, CBM data can help teams ask:

• Are interventions working?
• Are students making enough progress?
• Is support matched to student needs?
• Should instruction continue as-is, change, or intensify?

CBM data can be viewed at both the individual and system levels. Historically, CBM was often described as a way to monitor one student’s progress—and that remains important. But aggregated data can also help teams evaluate classrooms, grade levels, schools, and entire intervention programs.

If many students are performing below expectations, the first conclusion should not be that every student needs an intervention. Instead, the data may signal a need to examine:

• Core curriculum;
• Quality and consistency of instruction;
• Scheduling and instructional time;
• Access to intervention;
• Fidelity of implementation; and/or
• Opportunities to learn.

This broader view helps teams determine whether a concern is primarily at the student, group, or system level.

CBM may not be all of MTSS, but it can support a strong MTSS system by telling us what to focus our attention on and where to dedicate our time and resources. In fact, CBM is most useful when embedded in a problem-solving process—not treated as the process itself.

3. Reading CBM involves more than oral reading fluency.

For many educators, reading CBM is closely associated with passage oral reading. Oral reading remains valuable because it reflects the coordination of word recognition, accuracy, automaticity, and connected-text reading. But no single measure can answer every reading question.

Today’s reading CBMs may include:

• Phoneme segmentation
• Letter-sound knowledge
• Decoding or phonics
• Word-reading fluency
• Spelling or encoding
• Passage oral reading
• Vocabulary
• Reading comprehension
• Rapid automatic naming

These measures represent different parts of reading development. For example, a kindergarten student learning letter sounds and basic decoding may need a different indicator than a grade 4 student struggling with connected text.

Measure selection should be guided by the:

• Student’s age and stage of development;
• Skills being taught;
• Question we are trying to answer; and
• Decision the team needs to make.

This does not mean every student should receive every measure. One of the most important principles in assessment is parsimony, meaning: Collect the smallest amount of information needed to make a sound decision:

1. For universal screening, schools may select a few efficient indicators that identify students who may need additional reading support. If screening suggests a concern, teams can gather more targeted information.
2. For progress monitoring, the measure should be sensitive to growth and aligned closely enough with the reading intervention to show to what degree the student is benefiting.

The goal is not to create the largest assessment battery. Instead, it is to create a clear connection among the skill of concern, instruction being provided, measure being used, and decision that will follow. When these pieces align, CBM becomes far more useful.

4. Dyslexia screening is changing the CBM landscape.

The growth of dyslexia-screening requirements has increased attention to a broader range of early literacy skills. This broader focus often means additional assessments are added to universal screening, or additional diagnostics are required post-universal screening.

This goal is to help schools identify risk earlier and connect students to instruction sooner. However, it can also create a risk of adding measures without a clear plan for using the results. For this reason, it is important to remember what screening can—and cannot—do.

Screening can:

• Identify students who may need additional support;
• Highlight patterns at a system level that require attention;
• Support earlier instructional action; and
• Help schools evaluate group outcomes.

Screening cannot:

• Diagnose dyslexia;
• Explain the cause of a low score;
• Determine eligibility by itself; or
• Replace a comprehensive evaluation.

Put another way, a low screening score is a signal to act—not a diagnosis.

Whenever schools add a measure to their dyslexia screening toolkit, teams should ask:

1. What does this measure assess?
2. Why is this construct important?
3. What will we do when a student scores below expectations?
4. Is more assessment needed before instruction begins?
5. Are we duplicating information we already have?

Rapid automatic naming, or RAN, is one example. RAN may contribute information about how efficiently a student retrieves and names familiar visual information. It can be part of a broader risk profile, but it is not a direct measure of reading achievement and does not diagnose dyslexia.

The best screening systems balance comprehensiveness with efficiency. As we noted earlier, the point is not to build a longer testing battery; it is to identify risk early enough to provide effective instruction.

5. Technology is making CBM easier to use.

Technology has changed how educators administer, score, graph, and review CBM data. Digital systems can help schools:

• Reduce paperwork;
• Record responses in real time;
• Score measures efficiently;
• Display growth over time;
• Compare classroom or school outcomes; and
• Bring current data into team meetings.

These are meaningful improvements. When technology handles routine tasks, educators can spend more time interpreting results and teaching students.

But technology does not make CBM automatic. Brief measures are sensitive to differences in administration, so small changes in directions, timing, prompting, scoring, or testing conditions can affect results. Educators still need training and periodic checks to ensure measures are administered consistently.

Automated reports can also create the impression that interpretation has already been completed. For example, a system may flag a score, assign a risk category, or draw a trend line. Those features organize the information, but they do not replace professional judgment. Teams must still ask:

1. Was the measure administered correctly?
2. Does the result fit with other information?
3. What does the pattern suggest about instruction?
4. Was the intervention implemented as planned?
5. What should change before the next review?

Technology is especially valuable when it supports collaboration. CBM data should be reviewed during regularly scheduled grade-level meetings, professional learning communities, or multidisciplinary problem-solving meetings. Effective meetings include:

• Focused agendas;
• Consistent data-review routines;
• Relevant specialists;
• Clearly documented decisions; and
• A scheduled follow-up date.

The goal is to move from explaining the data to acting on the data:

1. When progress improves, teams should identify what educators changed.
2. When progress remains inadequate, teams should examine instructional match, program quality, fidelity, frequency, duration, and the need for additional information.

Technology makes the data easier to access, but people make the data useful.

Keeping CBM practical and purposeful this school year

CBM has evolved considerably since it was first developed. It now supports universal screening, progress monitoring, intervention evaluation, MTSS, dyslexia screening, and system-level improvement. But its foundational purpose has not changed.

CBM should help educators answer three essential questions:

1. Where is the student now?
2. Is the student making sufficient progress?
3. What should we do next?

These questions can be asked of an individual student or a group of students but, ultimately, should lead to an action step—whether it is at the system level or the student level.

The future of CBM should not be defined by how many measures we administer or reports we generate. It should be defined by how well we use the right information to improve teaching and learning.

For more insights on CBM today, we invite you to check out the latest edition of our book.