Overview of the K-6 Growth Report (HI #6)
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 answers and what data it displays is essential to data-based decision making. The K-6 Growth report (HI #6) answers the question: Are students who were below benchmark improving and now scoring above benchmark?
The K-6 Growth report is located on the Change 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 report. At this time, only literacy data is included in this Healthy Indicator report.
Select the windows in the upper right corner of the report to review the change in screening results between the two screening windows. In the example below, the data displayed is reflective of a change between the Fall to Winter windows. The available comparisons are combinations of current and historical consecutive windows, similar to the example below, as well as a Fall to Spring.
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 on the default assessment collected during the starting and ending windows selected on the report. The system then looks for students who were below benchmark in the starting window and looks to see how many of those students were at/above benchmark in the ending window. Students who are missing a score in either window will not be included in the report.
Using the K-6 Growth Report (HI #6) - School-level Data
This report helps with understanding the effectiveness of the universal tier for helping all students to grow, and for reducing existing gaps. It reflects a combination of universal tier instruction and any interventions in place for the students. Since one of the main goals of ELI and MTSS is to ensure that all students become successful readers, the goal is for the numbers here to be high. Ideally, the combination of universal instruction and high quality interventions that are monitored and altered if they aren’t making the needed improvement will be able to move a high percentage of students from below benchmark to above benchmark on literacy screenings.
Low numbers in this report indicate that the mix of instruction and intervention provided to students has not done what it needs to do. If this is the case, the next steps would include a review of how and what educators are doing to try and help students become successful readers. In particular, look at individual progress monitoring of student interventions to identify which interventions are working and which are not. Also, use the intervention reports to identify which interventions tend to produce the most growth, and which are not moving students to their goals rapidly enough. These interventions may need to be removed from the “toolbox” or reworked to be more effective. It is also good to step back and take a look at the Universal tier of instruction. Is enough time being spent in actual instruction with practice and feedback? Is there other information to help understand how well Universal Tier is being delivered?
Also, explore this report in conjunction with the K-6 Maintained report (HI #4). Is the school more effective at keeping students above benchmark? Moving students who are below benchmark into success? Do you see patterns when reviewing using the views and demographic filters? These may all provide clues to help identify areas to target for improvement, and areas that are working well.
In the example below, you’ll notice that third grade growth is low (with only 1 out of 17 students moving from below benchmark to above benchmark) while 100% of their students who were above benchmark maintained that level at the next screening. What is it about the interventions used in third grade that seems to not get strong results? And, why does the percentage of students growing above benchmark decrease from Kindergarten through third grade before rebounding?
Navigating the Report
Hover over the bar to view the number of students who achieved an at/above benchmark score in the ending window and the total number of students counted, which would be students that have scores for both screening windows and were below benchmark in the starting window.
Use View By and Filters on the left menu to explore the results by subgroups. Viewing by grade, for example, may help determine whether there are levels where instruction and intervention are not as effective in closing the gap.
