Deno, Mirkn, and colleagues at the University of Minnesota,
Institute for research on Learning Disabilities (IRLD), studied
potential measurement procedures of curricular measures
beginning in the late ‘70s throughout the ’80s and continue to
this day. Curriculum-Based Measures (CBM) were developed to
function as "academic thermometers" to monitor students’ growth
in basic academic skills domains. They are a set of simple,
short-duration fluency measures most frequently applied to
reading, spelling, written expression, and mathematics. Criteria
that best describe CBM include that measures are: (a) tied to
the curriculum of instruction, (b) of short duration to
facilitate frequent administration, (c) focus on direct and
repeated measures of student performance, (d) capable of
development of multiple forms, (e) inexpensive to create and
produce, and (f) sensitive to student achievement change over
time (Marston, 1989). Additionally, CBM provides teachers with
data that are useful for a number of educational purposes
including eligibility determination, screening, and
multi-referenced decision-making (i.e., individual, criterion
and norm referencing). A significant characteristic of CBM is
the development of measures that have high technically adequacy.
Thus, the measures are devised with standard development,
administration and scoring procedures to maintain high
reliability and validity.
By Tracey Hall, Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist, NCAC, and
Missy Mengel, RA at
http://www.cast.org/ncac/Curriculum-BasedEvaluations2913.cfm
