In RTI, what is progress monitoring?

• A. An annual high-stakes exam
• B. A monthly report that summarizes overall school progress
• C. A weekly parent-teacher conference
• D. An assessment tool used weekly or biweekly to measure specific skills and guide interventions

Answer: (D)

Progress monitoring in RTI is about regularly measuring a student’s growth in targeted skills to see if the instruction and interventions are helping. It uses brief, reliable assessments that are given weekly or biweekly, not once a year, and the results are used to decide whether to continue, intensify, change, or fade supports.

This fits best because it focuses on tracking specific skill progress over time and using that data to guide instructional decisions. For example, a quick weekly reading fluency probe shows whether a student is catching up with the goal; if progress is on track, you keep the current plan; if not, you adjust the intervention.

Other options don’t fit because they describe activities or assessments that aren’t used to monitor a single student’s response to instruction in a timely way (annual high-stakes exams), summarize school-wide progress (monthly reports), or are about communication rather than measurement (weekly parent-teacher conferences).