One feature of Inform that teachers began to discover during the 2010-2011 school year was the "Student Profile." Based on the elements of Inform that District 21 currently uses, this has two main components:

• Historical Grades, which are imported from PowerSchool after grades are stored at the end of a trimester
• Assessment Overview, which provides a snapshot in the form of a table and in the form of a graph (default)

At first glance, this seems like a great tool to quickly view a student's performance, but there are some important caveats for one to consider when examining the Individual Student Profile.



First, the good news... From this two-pane presentation, you can answer the following questions:

• On the whole, does the student meet standards, not meet the standards, or have a significant mix of meeting and not meeting standards?
• Does the student's performance according to her/his teachers match what is presented by the assessments? In other words, does a student who primarily earns As and 4s on report cards also typically meet standards on the range of assessments used throughout District 21?

Now, the caveats of which one must be aware when examining this display:

• Each assessment is presented as being of equal scope and importance. This is, of course, not true. Some assessments are one-minute reading fluency assessments while other assessments (NWEA, ISAT, ACCESS) are lengthy, comprehensive assessments taking 40 minutes to 1 hour.
• The assessments represent a mix across assessment areas--reading, writing and mathematics assessments are all included and, in the future, additional assessment areas are likely to be included as well. As a result, this provides a very general view of the student on-the-whole, rather than a more actionable, specific view.
• The line graphs connecting the "average" points do not mean anything. While the "average" points do represent the average on each assessment, there is no relationship between those average points across assessments. They should not be connected. A line graph suggests changes over time. These assessments are not given in a consistent manner over time that would be represented in a such a way at any time.

So, what should you do to take advantage of this individual student performance display without making bad assumptions about what the data actually says.

• Get an overview of the student's performance on assessments during his/her career in District 21. Does she/he mostly show green or red? Are the assessments very far from (very high or very low) the top of the yellow shaded "above/below" rectangle in the background of the graph?
• Switch from graph view to table view. Sort the assessments by clicking on the column headers. Do you draw the same conclusions about student performance that you found when looking at the graph?
• Look at the grades pane on the right. How does the student perform based on his/her grades?
• If the student is in middle school, how is his/her Learner Quality performance? How do Learner Quality and academic performance compare? (Similar? DIfferent?)

The Individual Student Profile is another interesting and potentially useful way to capture a snapshot over time and across assessments and assessment areas to describe a student. Use this tool to gauge a simple overview of a student, in general, but do so cautiously.

Tags: Inform, Data Analysis