Program Monitoring Practices for Teachers of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Early Intervention

Program monitoring is an important and necessary assessment practice within the field of early childhood deaf education. Effective program monitoring requires a focus on both the consistent implementation of intervention strategies (fidelity) and the assessment of children's ongoing progress in response to interventions (progress monitoring). Teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing (TODs) who provide early intervention services need to conduct regular program monitoring to evaluate the merit of their efforts. However, progress monitoring is a practice often overlooked by practitioners within the field of early intervention. It is recommended that TODs monitor children's progress "regularly," but evidence of such practices by TODs is as yet unavailable. In this article, we describe how TODs can use both progress monitoring and fidelity checks to achieve the goal of effective program monitoring for young children who are deaf and hard of hearing.