What does "monitoring student learning" involve?Defined this way, monitoring obviously includes many kinds of activities, but it is important to note that the present analysis does not address issues relating to schoolwide or district-level monitoring of student learning. It is not concerned, except incidentally, with monitoring students' behavior. And it provides only cursory information on such matters as teacher training in monitoring and assessment practices or the processes teachers follow in putting monitoring information to use. Instead, the focus here is classroom-level monitoring of student learning progress and what research says about the relationships between such monitoring and the student outcomes of achievement, attitudes and social behavior.

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The body of educational research literature which has come to be known as the effective schooling research identifies the practice of monitoring student learning as an essential component of high-quality education. The careful monitoring of student progress is shown in the literature to be one of the major factors differentiating effective schools and teachers from ineffective ones. Indeed, those analyses which have sought to determine the relative effect sizes of different instructional practices have identified monitoring student progress as a strong predictor of student achievement. What does "monitoring student learning" involve? The American Heritage dictionary defines monitoring as KEEPING WATCH OVER; SUPERVISING and also gives another more specific meaning: TO SCRUTINIZE OR CHECK SYSTEMATICALLY WITH A VIEW TO COLLECTING CERTAIN SPECIFIED CATEGORIES OF DATA. As the term is used in educational settings, monitoring takes in both these meanings and is closely connected with the related functions of record keeping, reporting, and decision making.

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