Exploration of the Predictive Validity of Middle School Math Screeners

Universal screening is a key element of multi‐tiered systems of support. Relative to literacy, fewer studies have investigated the psychometric properties of math assessments particularly amongst middle school students. We investigated whether outcomes from two types of curriculum‐based measures (CBMs), computational fluency (M‐COMP) and concepts and application (M‐CAP) were predictive of end of year test scores after accounting for performance on a computer adaptive test of broad math performance (Measures of Academic Progress—MAP). We used quantile regression to determine whether M‐COMP and M‐CAP were differentially important in predicting end of year scores as a function of overall student skill level (e.g., students performing far below expectations) after accounting for MAP scores. Including M‐COMP consistently improved predictions of end of year state test scores for grade six students scoring below the 25th percentile on an end of year achievement test. M‐COMP and M‐CAP provided limited additional predictive utility across skill levels for students in grades seven and eight.