Overview of the K-6 at Benchmark Report (HI #3)
Before you use a healthy indicator report to examine your system, it’s important to know what you’re looking at. Understanding what question(s) the report is designed to answer and what data are displayed is essential to data-based decision making. The K-6 at Benchmark report (HI #3) was designed to answer the question: Does our screening indicate that universal instruction is meeting the needs of the majority of our students?
The K-6 at Benchmark report is located on the Literacy or Mathematics reports on the Screening report tab and can be viewed at the state, AEA, district, and school levels. For the purpose of this document, we’ll examine the school level literacy report.
The upper right corner of the report displays the screening window in which the data was collected. In the example below, the screening window is Fall. This means the data on the report is a ‘snapshot’ based on school enrollment and screening data at the end of the last day of the Fall screening window. To view previous time spans, click the box and change the selection. You can also click on the gray dot with a ? in it to view the exact dates of the screening windows, if needed.
When viewing the K-6 at Benchmark report (HI #3) during the screening window, you will see (in progress) listed next to the screening window in the upper right corner.
To view the report definition, which includes what the report is intended to do, what data is used and how the calculations are made, as well as the goal, click the gray dot with the ? next to the Healthy Indicator report title.
Student Success locates K-6 students with a score collected during the screening window on the default literacy or math assessment and then counts how many of those scores were at/above benchmark.
Using the K-6 at Benchmark Report (HI #3) - School-level Data
The big idea underlying this report is that a well-constructed and well-implemented universal instruction program should help the majority of students to meet screening benchmarks. When this isn’t the case, it is a sign that something about what is being taught and/or how it is being taught is not meeting the needs of students. The percent of students at/above benchmark can indicate when adjustments need to be made to the universal tier. Typically, intervention systems can only support 5-20% of students - any more is usually not sustainable. This means that 80% or more of students should meet the benchmark without any additional intervention. If many students need extra support, it is more efficient to adjust the universal instruction to reduce that need for support.
Navigating the Report
View a video tutorial in: MTSS Data System Video Tutorials
Hover over the bar to view the number of students screened with the default assessment during the screening window out of the total number of students enrolled. Important! This data is only as strong as your “percent screened” data; if groups of students are left out or the percent screened is less than 95%, be cautious of using benchmark data in decision-making.
Use View By and Filters on the left menu to explore for evidence of areas where the needs are greater, and where there may be differences in subgroups that could suggest bias or perhaps areas where additional supports need to be worked into the universal tier because of the unique needs of that group of students.
Using the view by and filters can help find unintentional bias in your universal tier, to see if certain specific populations of students are reaching the benchmark at lower percentages than the overall school or grade. In addition, you may identify grades where a class-wide intervention would be advised because of the large percentage of students who scored below benchmark. In this case, class-wide intervention is more efficient than numerous individual or small group interventions. It also may lead to components of the intervention being integrated into regular classroom instruction to help all students be successful.
How to Locate Students Below Benchmark on the Students Tab
A logical next step for exploring data would be to find the students who scored below benchmark. There will likely be minor discrepancies between this view and what is in the K-6 at Benchmark report (HI #3) due to students who were screened outside of the screening window, and/or changes in enrollment since the end of the window. Do not use this to ‘match’ numbers, it’s simply a general guide.
- On the Students tab, select the appropriate report (literacy or math) on the left menu
- Click the Demographics filter on the left menu and select grade level(s) - Optional
- Select the default assessment in the drop-down above the graph (or other assessments if preferred)
- On the graph, click the yellow (some risk) and red (high risk) boxes or bar to select the below benchmark results.
- Use the views and filters to explore within this display.
