The Grouping Scheme

The Mastery report is an incredibly powerful tool to slice-and-dice student mastery data in order to answer important questions about individual and group progress.  With great power comes great responsibility, however, and it will take a few minutes to get to know the inner workings.

(Along with preloaded grouping schemes, you can create your own custom versions.  Take a look here for more information.)

The most important thing to know is that you can "drill in" to any level of data by clicking on the row.  The data that is displayed at each layer is determined by the "Grouping Scheme" that is selected at the bottom of the report.

Changing the grouping scheme can help you answer different questions about student mastery.  The grouping scheme default is set by your school or district but is generally <Student, StandardType, GSStandardTitle, Standard>.  This means that the top grouping layer is each student name along with the overall score for this course for the student.  When you expand to the next level it will show a folder for each standard type (usually Academic and Non-Academic of some kind) for that student along with an overall score for each type.  Expanding this level reveals each Graduation Standard (sometimes referred to as Content Standard or Strand) and the overall score for each for the student.  Expanding each Graduation Standard reveals the underlying standards (also referred to as Learning Targets, Directly Assessed Target, Performance Indicator, etc.) that are contained in the Graduation Standard and the overall score for each for the student.  The final layer reveals the individual score layer.  This shows each assessment that was used as evidence for the Performance Indicator along with the score entered by the teacher for that piece of evidence.

The default report can help you answer questions like

• Which levels of mastery are students showing for this course?
• Which levels of mastery are students showing for Graduation Standards?
• Which levels of mastery are students showing for Performance Indicators?

Sometimes you might be interested in a certain Graduation Standard or Performance Indicator and what level of mastery your class as a whole has.

These grouping schemes answer questions like

•  What Performance Indicator(s) do I need to re-teach or focus on and for which students?
• How might I group my students for a differentiated lesson?
• What levels of mastery are my students showing on Graduation Standards?

Here's a look: