Reviewing student results from the Placement and Benchmark tests in Imagine Language & Literacy

 Caution

For schools or districts who have chosen to implement the Imagine Galileo ELA Benchmark or the NWEA™ MAP® Growth Assessment, the article below applies only to students in Grade Pre-K. If your school or district is using the Imagine Language & Literacy (IL&L) assessments, this article applies to all grade levels. If you aren't sure which assessment your school is using, read Checking which assessment option your organization is using.

After your students have completed the Placement test or Benchmark testAdministrators can review test results for any student in their school or district, and Teachers can review test results for any students that are assigned to them. 

You can view the Placement test and Benchmark test scores at the same time from the same view. 

 Tips

After students complete two or more Benchmarks, compare your students' growth with the average expected growth. Are students showing half the expected gains between the BOY and MOY Benchmarks? Are students growing the full expected amount between the BOY and EOY Benchmarks? 

When analyzing student assessment data, keep the following recommendations in mind:

  • Clean your data before processing (e.g., remove any students with missing or incomplete data or who are no longer at your school).
  • Analyze data for each grade level or performance level separately.
  • Analyze subgroup data (e.g., special education; English language learners) separately from other student data.
  • Consider student usage levels and number of lessons attempted/passed. For example, students with sporadic usage likely won't demonstrate as much growth as students with consistent usage.
  • Consider students’ starting points when interpreting results. Students whose beginning assessment scores are significantly below grade level may show more growth than students whose beginning assessment scores are at or above grade level.
Teachers Administrators

To review results from the Placement or Benchmark test:

  1. Log in to Imagine Language & Literacy
  2. If you have more than one group, click the group at the bottom of the dashboard whose data you wish to view. Otherwise, go to step 3.

  3. Click the arrow at the top of the Growth widget.

  4. Results display on the Benchmark tab. 

    For students who have completed the Placement or Benchmark, you'll see see two scores—a Literacy score followed by an Oral Vocabulary score—in the applicable Beginning, Middle, and/or End column for that testing period.

     Note

    These overall scores are holistic measures of student performance. They increase when students demonstrate proficiency on sub-tests they attempt, but they also increase for lower-skill sub-tests the program allows them to skip. For example, if a student demonstrates they can proficiently recognize words, they are not tested in letter recognition, a lower-level skill. However, their overall score will reflect their proficiency in both word and letter recognition.

    Underneath the overall scores, you'll see the start and completion date for each assessment.

    The YTD column calculates and displays a change in scores after students have taken more than one assessment. Increases are in green and decreases are in red. 

    In the Performance Level (PL) column to the left of each student's name, a color-coded indicator compares the Literacy portion of their score to their grade level in accordance with the color coding in the legend at the top of the report. This indicator is calculated from the student's most recent Benchmark score.


    mceclip0.png

     Note

    Students in Grades 6 and up can only be certain colors

    Sixth graders can never be blue (above grade level) because the Imagine Language & Literacy content does not go above sixth grade. Seventh graders can only be yellow (one grade below) or red (two or more grades below), and eighth through twelfth graders can only be red.  

    For students in Grade 6 and above, disregard the color-coded performance indicator and focus on the Literacy score and the YTD column instead.

    Students who have not finished the test show Not Started, In Progress, or Expired instead of their scores. Under certain circumstances, you may be able to restart expired Benchmarks

  5. Click a student's name to drill down to the student-level report.

    The first bar graph shows Literacy scores as the year progresses. The bar on the far left is for grade level comparisons. Blue is above grade level, green (which extends horizontally across the graph) is on grade level, yellow is one grade below grade level, and red is two or more grades below.

    The second bar graph shows Oral Vocabulary scores as the year progresses. The bar on the far left shows varying shades of blues for the different vocabulary levels—Basic, Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. Basic is the lightest shade of blue and Advanced is the darkest. 

  6. Compare your students' scores with the Literacy and Oral Vocabulary proficiency ranges below the results table.
  7. Underneath the bar graphs, view details for each sub-test

    Although the overall Literacy and Oral Vocabulary scores are reported as scaled scores, each sub-test shows an accuracy percentage if the student took that sub-test. Results display as Tested Out if the program determined that the student could skip that sub-test. Results display as Not Ready if the program determined that the content would be too difficult for the student's current skill level. 

     Note

    The overall Literacy and Oral Vocabulary scores are calculated from sub-test performance. To calculate these overall scores, the raw scores from sub-tests are statistically transformed into scaled scores, which places the results from different sub-tests on the same, fixed scale. This allows a direct mathematical comparison of scores from increasingly difficult curriculum areas. Scaled scores for sub-tests increase not only as a student answers more questions correctly, but also as the assessed content becomes more difficult. 

  8. Move from one student-level report to another using the arrows in the top right.
    2023-02-15_17-10-26.png