This report describes how progress monitoring--a set of techniques for assessing student performance on a regular and frequent basis--can be an essential and integral part of an inclusive standards-based assessment and accountability system. In order to meet the higher expectations of current standards-based systems, educators need information that can be used to project how students are doing against the grade-level standards throughout the course of the year so they can determine what needs to be done to accelerate student progress toward the proficiency. This document discusses the benefits and uses of progress monitoring methods and formative data sources in four general categories: (1) Curriculum-Based Measurement; (2) Classroom assessments (system or teacher-developed); (3) Adaptive assessments; and (4) Large-scale assessments used during the year to monitor growth of individual students and groups of students. (Contains 1 footnote and 1 figure.)