Selecting the right math intervention assessment for students

When the time comes to select a math intervention assessment, educators need to focus on the assessment’s effectiveness. Looking at all the intervention assessments available, how do you know which will help your students achieve their math goals?

Teachers and administrators seek an efficient, streamlined intervention assessment that gathers all the details they need in one place. When you receive the assessment’s data, where should you go next? Fortunately, SpringMath provides a streamlined assessment with classwide and individualized intervention plans and simplified monitoring.

Creating the perfect math intervention begins with the quality of the initial screening. Initial screenings should measure the individual student’s performance and compare it to the district's data.  
Teachers can easily identify the next course of action based on the results of the assessment. You may find that only a few students need math intervention, or the entire class could use a boost.

Teacher high fiving student

Reliability

Educators must consider the assessment’s reliability when determining the right math intervention assessment. Each assessment scores a student’s work based on its own metrics, which may vary from assessment to assessment.

Some assessments use accuracy scores to determine a student’s ability to achieve more complex topics in their intervention plan. While this may seem like the most logical metric to use, other metrics provide a more reliable measure of a student’s future achievements.

A good indicator educators look at in terms of reliability is fluency scores. Assessments that generate fluency scores derived from foundational skills provide a more reliable insight into mastery of more complex skills among students. 

Predictive validity

Every administrator wants a predictively valid math intervention assessment. The assessment should accurately predict the needs of each student and drive their intervention plan.

Utilizing a predictively valid intervention assessment allows educators to feel more confident in their plan of action. When considering an assessment, teachers and administrators should pay attention to the predictive validity coefficient. Many educators recognize a coefficient above .60 within a year as a valid assessment.

Student versus classroom

Teachers can decide whether to assess individual students or the classroom as a whole. While it might seem more efficient to rely on an educator's perspective of which students need an intervention assessment, research shows that testing all students can have an impact on everyone’s success.

By testing an entire classroom, assessments like SpringMath can boost every student’s performance. In fact, one of every two students who scored below the 25th percentile benefitted from the classwide math intervention based on the current and previous years’ results.

The right math intervention will produce the best results for your students and your district. SpringMath brings reliability, predictive validity, and ultimately results, helping your students excel in math.

Ready to add SpringMath to your school or district?