Tracking Standards Mastery
Transparent Classroom can help you track the progress of children in educational standards. Their progress can either be tracked automatically or manually, depending on your school's priorities.
We already have many standards sets in our system, including CCSS Math, CCSS ELA-Literacy, and TEKS. If you have your own standards set, contact us and we will help get you started. Each standard set contains standards that are mapped to related lessons in Transparent Classroom.
In this article, you will learn about
- Lessons Mapped to Standards
- Automatically Tracking Standards Progress
- Manually Tracking Standards Progress
- Viewing Standards Progress for a Child
- Tracking Standards That Matter to You
Lessons Mapped to Standards
Central to tracking standards in Transparent Classroom is the concept of a mapping between a standard and lessons. A mapping means the lessons are somehow related to the standard. We have created mappings for much of the CCSS standards sets to help you get started and you're welcome to customize them and add your own. As an admin, visit [Admin] > [Standards] and choose which standards set you'd like to customize. Choose the lesson set and grade level in the top right corner, and then start mapping!
Automatically Track Standards Progress
By default, we compute a "best guess" of standards mastery based on the child's progress in lessons that are mapped to each standard. The level of progress for the standard will be the highest level of mastery among the lessons mapped to that standard. Automatic computation of standards allows schools to focus on lessons and worry less about standards, while still having some useful information when it comes time for conferences.
Manually Track Standards Progress
Schools are recommended to track standards progress manually when finer-grained control is needed and when the school needs to closely follow a standard set (e.g. public charter schools).
Your school must first opt into manual tracking which you can do by lesson set. Any Admin user can go to [Admin] > [Lesson Sets] > [Settings] > and check the box next to "Track standards progress manually" > [Save]. Your school will start with a clean slate for standards progress.
Alternately, we can start your school off with the levels from our "best guess" method and you can work from there. Our "best guess" generates standards progress based off lesson progress, which allows a school to start with our best guess as to the standard progress rather than working from a clean slate. If you would prefer to do that, simply email us at info@transparentclassroom.com and let us know.
There are two ways to manually record standards progress – through the [By Day] Lesson Plan page or through the child's Standards page.
Tracking Standards On the By Day Lesson Plan Page:
When you mark a lesson on the By Day plan as presented, a window will open so you can record (among other things) the students' progress in any standards that are mapped to the lesson
On a child's standards page:
You can visit the child's standards page by going to the child's profile page, clicking on [Standards], then (optionally, depending on your school settings) choosing the standards set in which you want to work. Make sure you're in the correct grade using the grade selector and then click into the circle to the left of the standard to change the progress of that standard.
Viewing Standards Progress for a Child
The primary way to view a child's progress in standards is on a conference report. Start by including the "Standards Table" widget and choosing which standards set and grades to include.
Once the report is generated, you can change the levels (which are either our "best guess" or your manual level set, depending on your school's approach discussed above) for the report. These changes are saved only on the conference report and do not reflect back on mastery levels set for the child.
If your school chooses to manually track standards, which gives you fine-grained control over the progress of children in standards, conference reports behave similarly to before except now the Standards Table will only show standards in which you have recorded progress.
Only Track Standards That Matter to You
We have a lot of standards sets available in Transparent Classroom (CCSS, TEKS, and many more local ones) and we continue to add more. We know that typically only a few actually matter to your school, so as an admin, you can visit [Admin] > [Standards] and choose which ones in which you'd want to monitor the progress of the children. Only standards that are enabled will show up for teachers in the lesson plan, on the child's standards, page, in conference reports, etc.
Setting a High Standard for Quality
We are passionate about making Transparent Classroom useful and make our features as user-driven as possible. As always, please feel free to email us with feedback or suggest new features.