Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Assessment Data topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
District midyear data show retention and growth; Erin demos new visualization tools
Summary
Erin presented midyear reading and math trend data showing grade-level retention and growth, highlighted a district shift in math placement results (2nd-grade below-benchmark students falling from 48 to 18) and demonstrated Tinkerplots and Happy Numbers used to target instruction.
Erin, a district data presenter, showed composite trend lines for grades 1'5 drawn from DIBELS and related subtests and said the visualizations indicate students are retaining instruction from the prior year and making midyear growth.
"So this is where they were at the beginning of the year to the middle of the year," Erin said while reviewing the charts, and she pointed to gains across grade levels and subtests. She explained phoneme-segmentation and nonsense-word fluency measures (PSF) and demonstrated how the Tinkerplots tool lets teachers click on an individual student's data point to diagnose specific skill gaps.
On math, Erin said the district has begun using Happy Numbers for elementary students (UPK'5) and described placement-test results: in one cohort, 48 students were below benchmark at the start of the year and 18 remained below benchmark at midyear. "So it's good to see because we really haven't looked at math; we haven't had a tool," Erin said.
Board members asked how to interpret small changes (for example, a 0.1 difference in composite numbers across grades) and Erin clarified that scores are grade-level specific and the tests differ by grade. The presentation concluded with board praise for teachers and administrators for implementing data-driven instruction.
