Utah State Board of Education specialists lead midyear Acadience and RISE data workshop for elementary educators

Dallas Brooks, elementary ELA assessment specialist at the Utah State Board of Education, and Jared Wright, elementary math and science assessment specialist, led a recorded virtual workshop to help elementary school leaders analyze middle‑of‑year Acadience and RISE benchmark data and plan next steps.

"The composite score tells us the likelihood of success that the student has on the next benchmark," Brooks said, explaining the red/yellow/green/blue color bands and how each band ties to recommended supports.

The training walked participants through the state’s midyear process: enter beginning‑of‑year and middle‑of‑year counts in a participant notebook, use ALO’s Benchmark Overview and the midyear "effectiveness of instructional support" report to view cohort pathways from BOY to MOY, and calculate the percentage of students making typical or better growth. Brooks and Wright demonstrated ALO navigation (student list → Benchmark Overview → filters or View Details), showed how to use the platform’s hover tool to reveal student counts, and explained how to print or save the pages as PDFs for records.

Key technical points included the presenters’ guidance on interpreting composite colors and growth bands: Brooks gave probability ranges tied to colors (examples cited by the presenters: red students have a roughly 10–20% chance of meeting the next benchmark, yellow about 40–60%, green about 80%, and blue about 90%) and recommended that red students receive intensive support while yellow students receive strategic support and green/blue students receive core instruction and monitoring. Wright laid out four midyear guideline targets for evaluating instruction: aim for about 80% of students to meet benchmark from core instruction; expect 95–100% of students who were at/above benchmark at BOY to remain at/above by MOY; look for movement of students who were below at BOY into at/above benchmark ranges; and ensure students who were well below make measurable gains toward benchmark.

Presenters emphasized combining measures of proficiency and growth — reviewing both benchmark status and pathways-of-progress — and demonstrated how to use ALO’s Pathways filters to compute the share of students making typical or better growth (for example, divide the number of students who made typical/above/well‑above growth by the total students with a pathway). They also highlighted practical steps for identifying root causes (interventions, scheduling, staffing, attendance) on page 14 of the notebook and recommended using pages 15–16 for "stars" (what’s working) and "stairs" (what to improve) before listing next steps.

The session included guided work time (timers were set for 15, 8, 10 and 15‑minute tasks) so attendees could populate notebook pages with their own data and compute growth percentages. Brooks noted that participant entries should include both percentages and raw counts and that users may need to copy notebook pages if they want separate math and reading analyses.

Brooks closed by posting a feedback form link that also issues a certificate for 2.5 relicensure points when completed, reminded attendees the session was being recorded and will be posted to the assessment YouTube channel, and invited follow‑up questions off‑line.

The workshop focused on platform navigation, interpreting cohort pathways and composite color guidance, and using structured reflection (participant notebook pages) to identify targeted instructional responses for the second half of the school year.