Background

In basic skills areas such as reading and writing, little teacher attention is devoted at the secondary-school level to improving student performance, perhaps in part because teachers are not clear whether improvements are even possible. In content-areas such as science, attention often is devoted to ensuring that students receive marks that will allow them to successfully move on to the next year or to graduate. Less attention is devoted to determining how much has actually been learned.

In recent years, research has led to the development of a progress monitoring system that can be used to track the learning of students with difficulties in areas such as reading, writing, language development, and content-area learning. Although previous research has supported the validity and reliability of this progress monitoring system, that research has all occurred in the United States. In the current research, we extend the work on progress monitoring to the Netherlands.

In addition, we examine teachers’ understanding and use of data to make educational decisions, and the effects of those decisions on the progress of students with disabilities such as dyslexia.

• dyslexia
• learning disabilities
• learning disorders
• learning problems
• progress monitoring
• reading comprehension
• reading skills