Curriculum Based Measurement – Demonstrated through the Development of Writing Competence in Primary School

In this contribution the curriculum based measurement is further developed and in the recent version empirically applied for the first time. The spelling competencies of children were regularly tested for a half year using a computer generated sample of twenty words belonging to a defined set of basic words. With such a procedure the classical test theory is not applicable but a binomial test model. The study proposes a new measure to assess the gains of learning and to predict future learning. Some of the results were not expected, particularly that nearly a third of the children did not improve at all during that period of time. This kind of diagnostic can foster the diagnostic compentencies of teachers. However, it is concluded that further appropriate research and development should be done.