Teacher judgment of student mastery of math skills

The purpose of this study was to describe teachers’ judgments about their students’ mastery of a set of math skills. Information on each student’s actual skill mastery based on curriculum-based measurement (CBM) was provided to nine special and general education elementary teachers. Teachers were then asked to identify the specific math skills their students had mastered. The skills rated as mastered by the teachers were compared to the students’ actual mastery on the CBM tests. Results indicated most teachers were not accurate at judging mastery of math skills despite having specific information about their students’ achievement. Results are discussed in terms of how teachers may use ongoing systematic achievement data to improve their judgments of student progress.