Curriculum-Based Measures of Beginning Writing: Technical Features of the Slope

Abstract

This study examined technical features of slopes produced from curriculum-based measures (CBM) of beginning writing. Eighty-five first-graders completed weekly sentence copy, picture-word, and story prompts for 12 weeks. After 12 weeks, testing revealed alternate-form reliability and criterion validity of CBM scores generally similar to those found in previous research. Examinations of group- and individual-level slopes indicated 8 or 9 data points are needed to yield reliable and stable slopes. The picture-word task appeared most sensitive to growth in brief periods, yielding slopes that were significantly greater than 0 within 4 weeks. Research directions and recommendations for monitoring progress of beginning writers are discussed.

Modeling early writing growth with curriculum-based measures.

“…Participants Data on early writing performance were drawn from a larger study involving five firstgrade classrooms from two schools in a large Midwestern urban school district (McMaster et al, 2011). The larger study involved an examination of technical features of slopes produced from several weekly administered early writing tasks, using ordinary least squares techniques to establish reliability, stability, and sensitivity to growth.…”

Assessment: Periodic Assessment to Monitor Progress

“…Recent research has identified several GOM approaches to assessing early writing progress (e.g., Coker and Ritchey 2010;McMaster et al 2009;McMaster et al 2011). These measures involve timed administration of items that scaffold in idea generation, which is important because writing taxes idea generation of young students (Berninger and Amtmann 2003) and can potentially mask measurement of their skill growth.…”

“…These measures involve timed administration of items that scaffold in idea generation, which is important because writing taxes idea generation of young students (Berninger and Amtmann 2003) and can potentially mask measurement of their skill growth. The available measures can be scored using various metrics (e.g., correctly spelled words, correct letter sequences) and have promising technical characteristics in terms of reliability and validity of single-point scores as well as for measuring growth (McMaster et al 2011). Figure 2 shows a sample progress monitoring graph of a student who was identified as needing additional writing support.…”

Using Curriculum-Based Measurement for Beginning Writers Within a Response to Intervention Framework

“…Recently, McMaster et al (2011) examined slopes from measures that emerged as promising in the Stage 1 research described previously (McMaster et al, 2009). Specifically, we administered Sentence-Copying and Picture-Word prompts weekly, and Story prompts biweekly, to 85 first graders across 12 weeks.…”

“…Parker et al (2011) applied linear mixed modeling (LMM) procedures to address each question using the dataset from McMaster et al (2011). Results indicated that overall growth trajectories on both Picture-Word and SentenceCopying tasks required random effect terms, suggesting that CBM for beginning writing is sensitive to individual variation in growth patterns across students.…”