Predictive Validity of Curriculum-Based Reading Measures for High-Stakes Outcome Assessments with Secondary Students Identified as Struggling Reader

Curriculum-based measurement (CBM) tools are used widely to assess students' progress within different stages of the Response to Intervention (RTI) process. Despite the wide-spread use, little research has identified the efficacy of reading CBMs in predicting secondary student outcomes on high-stakes assessments. High-stakes assessments are being utilized to determine outcomes for not just students, but teachers, administrators, and districts. More research is needed to determine if reading CBMs are useful tools for the populations of struggling secondary readers. The current study was a secondary analysis of existing data, which attempted to gain an understanding of this through examining the predictive validity of CBMs and high-stakes pre-assessments on end-of-year outcomes. The population included struggling, seventh grade readers who had not demonstrated proficiency on previous state tests and who attended urban schools representing low socio-economic status and high ethnic diversity. Results identified previous year state tests and norm-referenced tests as significant predictors of end-of-year outcomes, both individually and in combination. Though the reading fluency CBMs accounted for some variance in the regression equation, the amount was negligible. Student ethnicity and group status (i.e., whether received intervention) were not significant predictors of end-of year outcomes. These results indicate that CBMs may not provide additional valuable information in the prediction of student outcomes for secondary struggling readers. This finding is important for educators to weigh with other concerns, such as ease of use and time constraints, as existing pre-assessments (i.e., state tests, norm-referenced screening tools) may provide enough information without the additional use of CBMs.