We talk to a lot of literacy specialists everyday around the country. Though each local community has its own context and needs; we are noticing the proliferation of an unwieldy presence on many of these educators’ desktops: the crazy spreadsheet.
These spreadsheets are filled with multiple tabs, student IDs, year over year cohort comparisons, pivot tables, abbreviations for subtests and broader diagnostic assessments that can be confusing to understand on their own, let alone alongside one another… Sound familiar?
So how did these spreadsheets come to be? There is a common critical need among reading specialists: use data from multiple assessments to get a comprehensive view of each kid’s needs and ability. Many of the gold-standard assessments that specialists use are in different formats, administered by different people, at different points in time and are isolated data points that are often time-consuming to administer. Best case scenario is the crazy spreadsheet; worst case, fewer kids get a deep dive into their individual needs. Either way, not great.
At EarlyBird, we set out to not just have all the data in one place, but also have these data points relate to one another in scientifically valid ways. This coordination of data points makes a comprehensive and reliable view of each child more easily obtained and understood. See below for the visibility our Kindergarten platform provides across six gold standard assessments:
EarlyBird’s Comprehensive Assessment
Let’s zoom out: why are we assessing kids? So we can understand each child’s unique needs and ensure teachers have the skills and support needed to address those needs. Crazy spreadsheets sitting on a desktop aren’t getting us there.
A lot needs to happen to translate a student’s test and then teach the identified skills to mastery. The administration, recording, scoring, analyzing, translating, and communicating those results most frequently falls on the literacy specialists we work with every day. We applaud these educators’ ingenuity and analytical prowess.
We also want to give them their Sunday evenings back from messing with VLOOKUPs and formulas in Excel.