CBM: What it is and Why it Should be Used

            A teacher’s goal is to have their students understand curriculum based subjects as well as moral teachings. The success of a student depends on how well she understands subjects and passes regulated tests. What makes this goal hard is that not every student learns at the same pace, or through the same directions. Teachers have to adapt their lesson plans to be able to meet the needs of their individual students. To do this they need to keep track of where their students are in understanding the material. This is where Curriculum-Based Measurement helps the teacher.           

            Simply put, CBM is an assessment tool that helps teachers know where their students are in understanding the curriculum. To keep track of their student’s statistics, CBM has many tools to make this task easier. For example it comes with standard directions as well as standards to judge a child’s performance. The directions tell the students exactly what to do on the assessment, which is similar to something that the children are already doing in class. The performance standards tell the teacher exactly what the answers are and where the students should be.  The other materials include a timing device, materials, and charts listing the scores of the students. A scenario where CBM is used entails giving the students 30 seconds to read 7 sentences aloud. The performance standards would state the ranking of all the scores.  For example getting through all the sentences with 0 to 7 mistakes or reading 5 sentences with no mistakes is average. The same assessment would be given periodically (weekly, bi-weekly) to each of the students. The teachers will write the scores in there records . Then the teachers will adapt their lesson plans to help the individual students get to where they need to be. This will continue over time using the same assessment until the teachers get their students to where they need to be and also as close to on the same page as possible. One way of looking at how and why the teachers adapt their plans is by saying “a means to an end”.

           There are many reasons why CBM should be used. Three reasons that I feel are the most important include the term alignment. This strictly means that the assessments are the same and the answers/goals of the assessment are the same. The next reason is CBM has the answers clearly defined. There should be almost no confusion as to what the answers represent. For example reading 7 sentences aloud with 0 to 7 mistakes is the average score for students at this time. Lastly CBM is efficient. The assessment can be given quickly and the records are direct and thorough. Assessing the scores of the students is as black and white as possible.

The goals of a teacher are important. Achieving those goals is equally important. Since CBM is effective, efficient, and easy, teachers should use this tool to help educate their students.