CPM: Why doesn't the CPM (Circle Progress Monitoring) fully align with the pre-k guidelines?
Answer
CLI is a research-to-practice institution. The purpose of progress monitoring test questions is to measure skills that are predictive or closely aligned to a guideline, but not always the guideline or standard itself.
It’s important for all educators to keep in mind that assessment tools, such as CPM, do not explicitly evaluate each of the PKG items. Valid and reliable assessment tools like CPM are aligned to state or national standards however will not explicitly measure every single standard or guideline. The reason for this is that standards and guidelines change, therefore assessment tool vendors and their researchers and statisticians work hard to create bell curve models to help us understand where students may typically land within the scope of skills that are measured in the tool, which align to the standards and/or guidelines. This reduces the desire to “teach to the test”, and instead gain an accurate, reliable snapshot of where a student is in their academic development based on data gathered through research.
CPM was designed and validated as a criterion-referenced assessment. Criterion-referenced means that we are referencing how scores compare to a criterion such as a cut score or a benchmark. CPM is a standardized, criterion-referenced tool that relates well to established standardized tests and is sensitive to growth in children’s skills over time. In other words, CPM assesses the whole child in alignment to the updated guidelines and while taking state standards into consideration. We can ensure that given the nature of our criterion-referenced measures, Circle Progress Monitoring continues to align with the updated Pre-K guidelines.
Watch All About Pre-K Assessment & Guidelines Alignment to explore how the pre-K resources align to 3- and 4-year-old guidelines.
The Circle Progress Monitoring Technical Manual is available upon request.