Iowa: Progress Monitoring Completion and Percent Accuracy – FastBridge
Progress Monitoring and ELI
If you have questions about which students by Iowa law must be monitored or receive interventions, please refer to ELI in the FAST Lane or submit a support ticket for questions not covered by the article. Remember that articles outside of the Iowa Resources section in the knowledge base were not written with Iowa’s ELI law requirements in mind.
Tracking Progress Monitoring Completion
Reports to assist with tracking progress monitoring completion are located in Iowa's Student Success data system. The FastBridge system does not have a report at the grade or building level to examine whether or not students who are below benchmark are receiving regular progress monitoring.
Remember, it doesn’t do any good to administer progress monitoring tests to students regularly if there is no process for teachers to view and respond to the graphs, trends, and data. Collecting the progress monitoring data and rarely or never using it to check student progress and alter or replace ineffective interventions defeats the purpose of progress monitoring.
While percent accuracy is shown as a score prior to submitting the PM assessments, it is not displayed in the PM graph or another report. We have passed along the request for FastBridge to consider including accuracy in PM reports in the future. For now, the PM display includes a graph of errors, so you have several options to track accuracy if you wish.
Oral reading fluency is sensitive to improvement in accuracy without actually quantifying accuracy separately. As accuracy improves, the overall rate will improve, too.
Keep an eye on errors as displayed in the graph, watching for high rates of errors. As long as error rates are relatively low, more detailed monitoring of accuracy isn’t necessary.
Estimate accuracy: You can easily estimate accuracy. As long as accuracy is around 95% or better, there is no need to be concerned. 95% accuracy is about:
6 or fewer errors at a rate around 120 wcpm
4 or fewer errors at a rate around 80 wcpm
If necessary, calculate the accuracy for students who really need this monitored by:
Wcpm + Errors = Total Words
Wcpm / Total Words = Percent Accurate
Or, the person administering the PM could jot down the accuracy calculation prior to submitting the PM passage or even enter it in as a note (see above).
Follow your district's plan for support, usually by contacting your FastBridge District Manager. If your district doesn't have a plan, submit a support request in FastBridge or by emailing help@fastbridge.org (which also creates a support request). Don't forget to include specific details like the student's first and last name and the PM assessment. Do not use the chat feature or phone support number through Fastbridge, as your Iowa support team is not available via those methods.