New teachers are told to progress monitor, but rarely told why it matters or how to use what the data shows them. This session walks through five places where progress monitoring most often breaks down for new teachers, from vague goals that can't be measured to data that gets collected but never acts on anything. Using a single worked example, a student named Maya working toward a reading fluency goal, participants will see how to read a trend line, decide when to change instruction, and translate that data into a conversation a parent can actually understand. Attendees leave with a decision-rule template and plain-language scripts they can use the next time they sit down with a family.