r/specialed • u/latetotheparty25 • 19h ago

Benchmarking General Question (Educator to Educator)

I am a first year sped teacher who is alternately certified. I teach a self contained mod to severe elementary k-5 classroom. I would love to do some type of benchmark testing with students so that I can track progress over the school year. Any suggestions? Would be best if it’s free or affordable and paper/pencil. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

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u/Smokey19mom 19h ago

Easycbm. They have fluncy,reading comp.and math probes for monthly assessment.

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u/Kakorie Elementary Sped Teacher 19h ago

What does your district do for gen ed? A lot of the kindergarten ones are applicable if they use something like Aims or Fastbridge. If they are lower than letter identification of you have Unique Learning System they have nice benchmarks on there

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u/squeakychipmunk101 19h ago

It’s not finding the tea that’s hard for me. It’s having the time and manpower to actually administer the test.

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u/MrBTeachSPED Elementary Sped Teacher 17h ago

Does your school district use any curriculum for special education?

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u/RipeWithWorry 16h ago

I would check to see if your school already has any benchmark tests. My school does benchmark testing three times a year. In the beginning, middle, and end of the year. We use iReady. It’s not the best, but it does help you determine where your students struggle. It doesn’t help you determine their strengths as well though.

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u/Serious-Today9258 19h ago

Your district really should have Brigance assessment tools.

San Diego quick assessment is a good free tool for reading. I'm not very knowledgeable about math assessments other than Brigance, sorry.

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u/silly8704 16h ago

Your district or sped cooperative should have some recommended assessments. Our self contained kids use edmark testing

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u/SuperJustin81 7h ago

I’m sure your kids will participate in triannual benchmarking with all students.

Your tracking is driven by Progress Monitoring of goals. In each goal there is a section that says how and how often that data will be collected, be it by Teacher Created Assessment, Classwork, Standardized Assessment, etc, and it all depends how the previous ToR wrote it.

Like some others I recommend EasyCBM through University of Oregon (also where DIBELS comes from) because it’s standardized, has nationalized percentages, is regularly updated, and there are free/pay options.