Curriculum-Based Measurement: The Emerging Alternative

none - conceptual/position paper introducing the method

US special education, and by extension general classroom assessment

The founder's statement of the method, with no empirical test of its own - grade D and developer-led. Included because it frames the decision this topic is about and because one of its premises is an empirical claim the archive should keep in view.

The framing argument for measuring what you are actually teaching. Commercially distributed achievement tests are not always congruent with curriculum objectives, and teachers do not value the information they yield; teachers instead prefer informal observation, whose reliability and validity are UNKNOWN. Curriculum-based measurement is offered as the combination - standardised observation of performance inside the curriculum, generating reliable data that is valid against the usual indicators (achievement test scores, age, programme placement, teacher judgements of competence) and usable for screening, referral, planning, progress and outcome decisions. The premise that teachers' informal judgement has unmeasured reliability is the load-bearing one for an intake tool built around a parent's impressions of their own child.

Not applicable - a methodological position paper.

Not an empirical finding. The efficacy of the method it proposes was subsequently estimated by Fuchs & Fuchs (1986) and, much lower, by the modern syntheses.