Identifying CBM Writing Indices for Eighth Grade Students

Curriculum-based measurement (CBM) is an alternative to traditional assessment techniques. Initially CBM was developed so that teachers could monitor elementary students' growth in basic skill areas. Thus, most of the CBM research was conducted at the elementary school level. Recently, educators have become interested in applying CBM at the secondary level. Therefore, technical work has begun in order to identify CBM writing indices that are psychometrically sound for purposes of monitoring older students' growth. CBM is thought to be a valuable assessment tool in writing due to the ease with which educators can produce and score CBM probes. Additionally, CBM is a direct assessment of written expression. That is, CBM requires students to formulate a written product. This is in contrast to most traditional measures. The present study examined the predictive validity of the following CBM writing indices: total words written, words spelled correctly, percentage of words spelled correctly, number of correct word sequences, percentage of correct word sequences, number of correct minus incorrect word sequences, number of sentences, number of correct capitalization, total punctuation marks, and number of correct punctuation marks. Regression analyses revealed simple fluency measures are not sufficient for assessing secondary students' writing ability. Results indicated that a more complex fluency measure, the number of correct punctuation marks, and an accuracy-based measure, the percentage of correct word sequences, were the best predictors of a well-designed written expression test for eighth grade students. However, overall results of the current study did not lend strong support to the use of CBM to assess and monitor writing skill at the secondary level.