The DeSoto County School District was hesitant to change their assessment management system according to Carol Smith and Jennifer Stripling, the Directors of Elementary and Secondary Education. However, making the change has turned out to be a win for the district.
The Challenge
Throughout DeSoto County Schools, teachers were lacking the assessment insights needed to truly drive instructional decisions. The district knew they needed to move away from the assessment cadence that they were used to. There were two problems with this strategy: students were feeling test burnout and even though they were collecting assessment data, it was difficult for teachers to know how students were progressing towards standards’ mastery.
A change was needed. However, change can be difficult. Especially during a time when widespread COVID-19 cases at DeSoto were disrupting instruction. Hoping to limit any further disruptions, Smith and Stripling wanted to ensure that a change to the right assessment management system would be valuable long-term for their teachers and students.
Smith and Stripling both admit that they were hesitant to put their teachers through another change, but ultimately they knew that a transition to MasteryConnect was an opportunity to move towards mastery-based assessment and empower their faculty with actionable, accessible student performance data in realtime.
Key Insights
Implementing MasteryConnect tools in the classroom has shifted assessment from being a one-time milestone to an ongoing part of each student’s learning journey.
Incorporating formative assessments at the secondary level–for all subjects–has never been simpler with MasteryConnect.
Utilizing data from reports in MasteryConnect is an intuitive and quick way to personalize instruction and drive student learning.
Aligning instruction in ongoing PLCs has proven to be a valuable collaboration tool for educators to identify gaps in instruction and adjust accordingly.
The Solution
MasteryConnect has put teachers at DeSoto in the driver’s seat. Assessments are now seen as more than just tests by educators and students alike and give educators the insight they need into what their students know and don’t know. Smith said that, at the lower elementary level, teachers love being able to conduct a quick true/ false formative assessment and see students’ mastery of a topic quickly. Previously, collecting this data could have taken teachers days.
MasteryConnect has been a good tool not just for the student data it gives us, but t has also been good for teacher perspective and reflection.
Carol Smith, Director of Elementary Education at DeSoto County School District
Reporting that Resonates
Administrators were intentional about both setting their teachers up for success and accelerating adoption of MasteryConnect. With these goals in mind, administrators chose to create Mastery Trackers on behalf of the teachers so that they could quickly witness the power of masterybased reporting. In these reports, teachers gain a datainformed understanding of specific student needs in an intuitive, visually-appealing way. Educators are able to act on this data from reports in one-on-one student interventions at the right time.
This automation of a data-gathering process that was previously manual for teachers has also granted teachers with more time. A precious gift to teachers who are already extending so much of energy on lesson planning in and outside of the classroom. Despite initial apprehension towards change, many teachers now see the value of MasteryConnect–especially its accessible, actionable reporting.
“I have had a lot of teachers talk highly of the change…they see now what it can do and how it benefits them,” Stripling said. “It sold itself in a sense…once they saw it.”
MasteryConnect has also simplified tracking student progress over the years of their academic career– especially as it relates to IEP documentation, Stripling went on to say.
Standards-Base Report Cards made Easy
At the elementary level, Kindergarten teachers appreciate the time and effort saved when report card season comes around. Smith said that MasteryConnect has allowed for all areas of a students’ understanding to be brought into one place and the benefit is twofold. The student knows where they need to grow and the teacher saves time by easily populating data into their standards-based report cards.
Many schools in DeSoto are using data from MasteryConnect to collaborate in PLCs by identifying standards where students are struggling and planning instruction to fill in any gaps. In a recent study, we found that regular conversations like these around assessments in PLCs contributes to a positive assessment culture.
The Results
“The [MasteryConnect] reports have given educators something that they can continually look at between benchmarks to help guide planning…if we teach all the way up to the state test and if we’re teaching based on the data, then we don’t have to ‘shut down teaching’ for state test practice. We can use the data to keep on teaching…” according to Smith.
Smith went on to say that this emerging perspective may just be “the biggest benefit of all.”
DeSoto County School District