The purpose of this study was to examine the alternate-form reliability, criterion validity, and sensitivity of progress-monitoring measures in reading for secondary-level English Learners (ELs). Twenty-five ELs in an urban high school were administered two types of Curriculum-Based Measures (CBM) once every 3 weeks for 13 weeks. Measures included 2-min timed maze tasks and 1-min timed oral reading tasks drawn from 5th-grade level passages. Both types of measures produced scores with strong alternate-form reliability, were stable over time, and correlated moderately to strongly with measures of academic language proficiency, word-level reading, fluency, and comprehension. The measures also showed statistically significant growth over time, but standard errors of estimate indicated substantial intraindividual instability across CBM administrations. Findings indicate that maze and oral reading CBM show promise for monitoring reading progress of ELs. Implications for further research and practice are discussed.
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