Data Analysis and Next Steps
Analyzing Student Data
Step 1: Internalize the Assessment and Examine Resources
At the beginning of the school year, educators should examine CenterPoint’s EL Curriculum-Aligned Interim Assessment Blueprints that outline how material will be measured throughout the academic year and how each assessment explicitly aligns to the EL Curriculum.
Included with every CenterPoint assessment are essential companion materials to help educators understand how students are being tested. Prior to conducting any data analyses, educators should collect and review: 1) Test Maps, 2) Text Complexity Worksheets, 3) Rubrics, and in some cases sample student responses.
Prior to teaching a unit or evaluating student data, educators should examine the associated Test Map to better understand the following:
- How many items are on this assessment?
- What types of items are used?
- What is the distribution of rigor (DOK) for items?
- What standards are items best aligned to?
- What are the text features used in this assessment?
By answering these questions ahead of time, educators can review data, keeping in mind exactly what sort of content students have interacted with and how they were asked to show evidence of learning. It is further recommended that, when possible, educators should closely review or complete the assessment themselves. Educators should annotate items and determine when and why a student might select a specific distractor. They should take note of how students are being asked to demonstrate learning, what texts or examples are being used, and keep these considerations in mind when approaching an instruction or assessment cycle. Through test internalization, educators can connect what their students have experienced in the classroom with how they were assessed.
Step 2: Examine Standards-Level Data
All of CenterPoint’s data platforms provide a standards-level view of student performance. It is important to note that the EL Curriculum-Aligned Interim Assessments must strike a balance between measuring the standards and the scope of the curriculum. All items are intended to be aligned to standards; however, it would take several items to comprehensively measure an individual standard, which would require extending the assessments beyond their present length. Because of this, the EL Curriculum-Aligned Interim Assessments balance the coverage of standards over the course of a year.
Therefore, educators reviewing student data should consider standard mastery but take caution in giving too much weight to any given standard-level report. Many standards have only 1 or 2 items per interim assessment. In most cases, the EL Curriculum-Aligned Interim Assessments will measure RL/RI Standards 1 and 2 multiple times, but the remaining standards may only get one or two items in an assessment. As such, looking at standard-level data should only be done when also conducting an item analysis.
Standards-level data provide a cursory and broad overview when beginning data analysis but should be interpreted with an appropriate amount of nuance and skepticism if students master or do not master a specific standard. (See our blogpost here to see an example of how to avoid this mistake.)
Step 3: Re-examine the Test Map
Educators should use Test Maps to support data analysis work. Specifically, an educator should look at the Test Map and consider the following questions:
- How did students do on items based on their rigor, or DOK (1-3)?
- How did students do based on the item type (Multiple choice, multi-selection, etc.)?
- How did students do on later items in the assessment versus earlier ones, or did they demonstrate test fatigue?
- How did students do based on the text itself? (See the next step below.)
By using the Test Map as a companion to a data view, educators can deduce more about student performance and begin to consider remediation, intervention, and instructional changes prior to conducting an item analysis.
Step 4: Examine Data by Text
For each EL Curriculum-Aligned Interim Assessment, students will interact with four texts. All the questions will be dependent on these texts. Consequently, it is important for educators to examine the topics, features, and characteristics of these texts as they conduct data analysis.
Within each assessment, two of the four texts will be aligned to the topics covered in the EL curriculum. In many cases, educators can find patterns of student performance by text complexity or topic alignment and not a specific skill. (e.g., Students may do well with Reading Standard 1 (citing textual evidence) for less complex texts but have greater difficulty with the same standard applied to complex texts.)
CenterPoint organizes texts used in our assessments by three levels:
- Readily Accessible (RA) = Texts that should be accessible by students in a specific grade-level with less demanding features
- Medium Complex (MC) = Texts in the middle of the range for a specific grade-level, with some features that are readily accessible balanced by more complex features, or with all features readily accessible
- Very Complex (VC) = Texts in the upper range for a specific grade-level, with most that have features considered to be complex, especially when considering the tasks being measured by the text and the text’s purpose
Most basic features of a text are outlined in the Test Map. Further, assessments have included Text Complexity Worksheets that outline the quantitative and qualitative features of texts used in a specific assessment.
Step 5: Conduct an Item Analysis
CenterPoint item types provide deeper opportunities for analysis, ranging from multiple-choice options to written responses. Select the link for a table of considerations when conducting a specific item analysis.
Item Analysis Considerations Table
Step 6: Examine Student Performance Across the Year
CenterPoint assessments are intended to help educators measure student learning throughout the year and comprehensively measure all grade-level standards. In addition, many of CenterPoint’s data platform partners provide opportunities to collate student data throughout the year, giving educators an opportunity to step back and examine student learning over the course of the year.
Educators can look at the “bigger picture” over the course of a year to determine patterns in student performance. (e.g., Did students struggle or succeed with specific item types, text types, or item features?) Following each interim assessment cycle, educators should examine how a specific interim assessment applies to the assessment throughout the year, particularly as students prepare for their end-of-year summative assessment.
Instructional Next Steps
CenterPoint’s EL Curriculum-Aligned Interim Assessments are meant to provide information about student progress toward end-of-year expectations and to identify areas of strength and improvement regarding how well students can read and respond to authentic, complex literary and informational texts and engage in performance-based tasks. Additionally, the questions on the interim assessments are like those on state summative assessments; thus, providing an indication of student progress throughout the year and a better understanding of what to expect on end-of-year assessments.
The score reports from the interims provide data that can be used to deepen educators’ understanding of their students’ learning progress toward college and career readiness and to determine patterns of student performance to diagnose students’ strengths and areas of need.
Interim Expectations and Strategies for Supporting Students in ELA/Literacy
In reading, students meet expectations when they can:
- extract and build meaning during reading through oral language interactions (K-2)
- be generally accurate when asking and/or answering questions (grades K-4), or do generally accurate analyses of complex text (grades 5-11)
- show general understanding of the text when referring to explicit details and examples in the text (grades K-11)
- show general understanding of the text when explaining (grades 4-5) or supporting (grades 6-11) sound inferences drawn from the text
Reading Comprehension Supports
When students have not yet earned scores that indicate on-track performances for reading comprehension, the following instructional supports may be provided:
Additional Ways to Use Interim Data to Support Increased Learning for Reading Comprehension
- If an educator determines an area of need for a student, it may help to have that student describe their thinking and talk through sample items while answering those types of items. An educator may use released sample selected-response items from the Reading section of the end-of-year summative assessment for this purpose. Since students may be unfamiliar with how to think aloud, educators will likely want to first model the process for think aloud with a sample question. The act of listening in to students as they think aloud responses is a great means to help educators and students uncover any conceptual misunderstandings and provide insight into the nature of erroneous thinking.
- Educators may find it useful to share sample items for informational texts with those who teach contents other than English language arts and to share how content area educators can support specified students who require additional instruction and practice for identified skill gaps.
- Educators in a professional learning community (whether formal or informal) may find it helpful to share ideas on how to support students who are struggling with reading comprehension at a given grade level. Educators could focus specifically on how the EL curriculum allows for embedding additional support needed within upcoming lessons, thereby allowing for support to be provided as part of daily core general instruction.
In writing, students meet expectations when they can:
- address the prompt and provide development of ideas, including when drawing evidence from multiple sources, demonstrating, for the most part, purposeful and mostly controlled organization;
- demonstrate command of the conventions of Standard English consistent with edited writing. Errors in grammar and usage may occasionally impede understanding but meaning is generally clear.
Student writing performance is measured using a scoring rubric provided with each constructed-response item. For students who have not yet demonstrated a Score Level 3 and above in Written Expression and Score Level 2 and above in Knowledge of Language and Conventions, educators should review the student-writing product in the following areas: Development, Organization, Word Choice/Style, and Knowledge of Language and Conventions.
Writing Supports
When students have not yet earned scores that indicate on-track performances for reading comprehension, the following instructional supports may be provided:
Additional Ways to Use Interim Data to Support Increased Learning in Writing
- If an educator determines an area of need for a student, it may help to have that student describe their thinking and talk through how to address the constructed-response prompts. An educator may use released sample constructed-response items from the end-of-year summative assessment for this purpose. Since students may be unfamiliar with how to think aloud, educators will likely want to first model the process of thinking aloud with a sample prompt. The act of listening in to students as they think aloud responses is a great means to help educators and students uncover any conceptual misunderstandings and provide insight into the nature of erroneous thinking.
- Educators may find it useful to share sample constructed-response items for informational texts, as well as scoring rubrics, with those who teach contents other than English language arts and to share how content area educators can support specified students who require additional instruction and practice for identified skill gaps.
- Educators in a professional learning community (whether formal or informal) may find it helpful to share ideas on how to support students who are struggling with writing at a given grade level. Educators could focus specifically on how the EL curriculum allows for embedding additional support needed within upcoming lessons, thereby allowing for support to be provided as part of daily core general instruction.
