How are CBM goals set for students with an IEP?

Knox County is utilizing CBM data to better judge the academic progress of our students. In addition to the benchmarking of all students, CBM data is used to assess the academic growth of some students placed on academic interventions prior to referral regarding special education eligibility. Goals are developed based on normative date from the Knox County population and progress towards that goal is measured. Special education student progress is monitored weekly rather than three times a year so that decisions regarding progress can be made more quickly. The following presents an overview of that goal setting process.

1. Determine where student is average in comparison to KCS norms from 2006-2007 and then go up a grade level for monitoring progress over the next year.

2.  Determine how much growth is needed to achieve the 25th percentile by the end of the IEP period by looking at the spring benchmark score for the 25th percentile at that grade level. 

3.  Subtract the current score at that grade level from the benchmark score in the spring at the 25th percentile.  This is how many words per minute the student will need to add to their reading fluency skills to meet the goal by the end of the IEP year. 

4.  Divide the difference by the number of weeks in the IEP period (almost always 36 weeks) to obtain the weekly growth rate. 

5.  Compare this growth rate to the growth rate of the student last year.  For example, if a student had a ROI of .7 last year, we would not want to use a growth rate of .5 this year.  We want to keep the student moving forward.

6.  Check this growth rate against the Knox County Guidelines.  Is it a modest, reasonable, or ambitious goal?  Is the goal attainable?

7.  You can also use a growth rate chosen from the KC Guidelines chart, but you need to check the appropriateness of the score against the method noted in steps 1-5 to ensure that the goal will continue the child moving forward, not backward.  

8. Monitor the goal weekly. Ideally, the black goal line and the red dotted line should be very close together to show the student is making progress towards the goal. If the red line is well below the black goal line, this indicates we have set our goal too low. The trend of the line needs to be examined, but if four or more of the data points are above the black line, a higher goal needs to be developed. Goals can be raised without having  an IEP team meeting, but the parent needs to be contacted. However, if the red line is below the goal line consistently, an IEP meeting will be needed to change the goal.         

Example:

Jerry is a fourth grade student in resource for reading.  It is time for his annual IEP review.  You have been asked to attend to assist in writing a reading goal using AIMSweb.  The following information has been obtained:

SLA
4th Grade:                   45 wpm (Winter Norms—Below 10th percentile)
3rd Grade:                   52 wpm (Winter Norms – Below 25th percentile)
2nd Grade:                  70 wpm (Winter Norms – Below 50th percentile)

Last year, Jerry met his AIMSweb goal, which was monitored on the second grade level.  His rate of growth was .8. 

Because Jerry was average at the 2nd grade level, this year we will move the goal up to the third grade level to allow for one year’s progress.  First we need to know how many words he needs to master by the end of the IEP period to be at the 25th percentile.  At the end of third grade, a student at the 25th percentile reads 88 wpm.  We subtract Jerry’s current wpm at third grade (52) from what he needs to have to by the end of his IEP (88).  We do the math (88-52=36) and note that he needs to add 36 wpm to achieve the goal.  To get what growth he needs to make weekly in order to meet the year’s goal, we divide 36 by the number of weeks in the IEP period (i.e. 36 weeks).  Doing the math, we get 36/36=1, or 1.0 words per week.  In this case, 1.0 becomes our growth rate.  We check this growth rate against his growth rate of .8 from last year.  This growth rate represents an increase which would continue Jerry’s progress toward his reading fluency skills. 

The goal would be written, the information put into AIMSweb, and progress would be closely monitored.

  2. Does oral reading fluency measure reading comprehension?