Abstract:

Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) was originally developed to measure achievement and progress in basic academic skills and to inform instruction. It was designed for use by teachers as a guide to their instructional decisions. Research on Curriculum-Based Measurement for Writing (CBM-W) with secondary school students is still scarce and mainly limited to examining the validity and reliability of CBM-W measures. As writing proficiency is a process that continues to develop with education throughout school life, and as a large number of secondary students still face challenges in writing, it is important to identify measures that are sensitive to writing growth.

The purpose of this review is to revise and describe the existing evidence on the sensitivity of CBM-W measures to growth at the secondary level. The online databases Scopus and EBSCOhost were searched for studies published in peer-reviewed journals with no restriction on year of publication. The results indicated that only a few studies met the criteria. Five (5) reported sensitivity to growth over an academic year and only one examined sensitivity to growth over a much shorter period (11 weeks). We discuss the findings and implications for the use of the CBM-W as a tool for monitoring progress in secondary schools, and future directions for research in this field.

Keywords:

Curriculum-based measurement, secondary education, written expression, progress monitoring.