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 test, Administrators 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.
To review results from the Placement or Benchmark test:
- Log in to Imagine Language & Literacy.
- 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.
- Click the arrow at the top of the Growth widget.
- 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.
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.
- 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.
- Compare your students' scores with the Literacy and Oral Vocabulary proficiency ranges below the results table.
- 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.
- Move from one student-level report to another using the arrows in the top right.
To review results from the Placement or Benchmark test:
- Log in to Imagine Language & Literacy.
- Click the arrow at the top of the Growth widget.
- STATUS VIEW: The Growth report opens to the Benchmark Test tab. The View tab is set to Status. This view shows how many students have completed the assessment; read about this view in Checking student Benchmark/Placement completion status in Imagine Language & Literacy.
- GAINS VIEW: Click the Gains tab in the View section and make selections in the Grade, Curriculum Area (Literacy or Oral Vocabulary), and Testing Time Periods drop-down menus. This page calculates the average Benchmark scores and changes in average Benchmark scores throughout the year.
The first portion of the Gains tab is a graph that shows the average scores for the Curriculum Area and Testing Period(s) you've selected.
Note
On the Gains tab, only those students who have taken all the tests in the Testing Time Periods filter you selected will display in the results. For example, if you look only at Beginning scores, you may see that 24 Grade K students are returned in the results. If you change the filter to Beginning and Middle, the number will likely reduce because it only includes students who have taken both assessments. Similarly, if you select Beginning, Middle, and End for your testing periods, the number of students returned in the results will likely decrease further since only students who took all three assessments are used in the score calculations.
The average scores also fluctuate as the denominator (number of students taking the test) changes.
When the Curriculum Area is set to Literacy, look for student scores to increase and approach grade level as indicated by the light green horizontal bars. The vertical bars are color-coded according to the legend below the graph to show the average student performance level.When the Curriculum Area is set to Oral Vocabulary, the bars range in color from light blue (Basic vocabulary level) to dark blue (Advanced vocabulary level).
Underneath the bar chart are two tables that show the average scores for the Beginning, Middle, and End Testing Periods. The tables also display the Change YTD once students take two or more assessments. Increases are shown in green and decreases in red.
The first table shows the curriculum area gains by Grade.
The second table shows gains by Group (class) if you are a School Administrator.Note
District Administrators have a slightly different view in the second table. Results list by School instead of Group, but you can drill down to the Group level by clicking on the name of a school.
- PERFORMANCE VIEW: Click the Performance tab in the Views section and make selections in the Grade, Curriculum Area, and Testing Time Periods drop-down menus. This tab provides a color-coded view of the percentages of students at different performance levels (above grade level, on grade level, and below), as indicated by the legend at the top of the page.
Note
Just like in the Gains view, in the Performance view, only those students who have taken all the tests in the Testing Time Periods filter you selected are used in the score calculations and display in the results.
- Hover over a portion of the bar graph for the count and percentage of students in that performance level.
Recommendation
If you chose Literacy in the Curriculum Area filter in the Gains and Performance views, go back and select Oral Vocabulary before exiting the report.
- Click the name of a school, grade, or class to drill down into more detailed information. Follow the steps in the Teacher tab in this article to interpret the data at the class or student level.