Data Cards

Target Cards for Expected Growth on Iowa Assessments
I'm always looking for ways to make data more useable for students. I have to thank my mentor, Jill Anderson, from Norwalk Schools for sharing the district's data card idea with me (Created by Sandy Latham and Jan Jensen, I believe). When I learned of it 4 days before we started testing, I had to get it done for Van Meter students because it was so great!

You can print business cards is almost any word processing program, and I did a mail merge with an Excel data file that pulled our student scores and the Iowa Assessment norms into one document. The finished example is below.

Our students had the cards out in front of them when the started the testing, and teachers went over what their personal target was (based on the expected growth tables and their previous year's scaled score). Students really like to see the personalized card and appreciated the number of questions they had to get right. It was a more concrete example for them instead of the scaled score itself.

A practice we will continue for next year, one teacher had students write on the back of the card the amount of time the test took them and then collected all the cards at the end of testing. When we received the results, she handed back the cards along with the paper reports so students could see if they hit their target.

If you are interested in the files to help build your own target card, I've linked them to my web page for your convenience.