Strategies for Minimizing Variability in Progress Monitoring of Oral Reading Fluency

Curriculum based measurement (CBM) is widely used to monitor student progress on academic skills. Within the context of reading, CBM oral reading fluency (ORF) is the most commonly used progress-monitoring measure of students' reading abilities. While CBM ORF is a good predictor of students' current and future reading performance, student performance on these passages can be excessively variable within grade levels. Excessive variability may hinder educators' abilities to make accurate data-based decisions to guide instruction. In light of recent research evaluating CBM ORF variability, this article summarizes the research on variability in CBM ORF for progress monitoring, and gives research-based, practitioner-friendly recommendations to prevent and address variability in CBM ORF for progress monitoring.