Beyond the Benchmark: What Screening Data Can Tell Us

By Dr. Stephanie Brenner, Dr. Sherri Lorton, and Constance Hallemeier, M.Ed.

At the beginning of the school year, we screen our students. Screeners often answer one important question: Which students are at risk and may need additional support? This question matters because it helps teachers identify students who need closer attention before concerns become more significant. Screeners identify students who may be at risk, but they do NOT explain why a student is struggling or provide a diagnosis. Screening data is only one piece of evidence that should prompt further investigation, not determine an instructional response on its own.

Which students struggle isn’t the only question a screener can answer. The same data also answers a hidden question: What is it telling us about our instruction, curriculum, and systems? Schools can use this information to:

• Tell a collective story about a group of students
• Identify patterns across classrooms, grade levels, skills, or time
• Provide evidence for decisions about
• Tier 1 instruction
• professional learning
• curriculum and resources
• instructional approaches
• where schools allocate support.
  

From Individual Results to the Collective Story

Our classrooms are full of individual students, and it’s great to know which ones need additional support and which ones need further assessments to get a closer look at their skill level. But beyond the individual student, the screener can answer some valuable questions about the classroom, grade level, or system level:

• Are several students demonstrating difficulty with the same skill?
• Are similar patterns appearing across classrooms?
• Are particular grade levels showing a consistent area of need?
• Are certain skills emerging as challenges across multiple grades?
• Are patterns changing from one screening window to another?

Patterns can emerge that lead to valuable team conversations and professional learning.

In Elementary School

If many third graders across several classrooms struggle with the same foundational reading skill, the question isn't only which students need intervention. Leaders might also ask whether Tier 1 instruction gives students enough opportunities to develop that skill or whether additional support needs to be added to the Tier 1 resource being used.

In Middle School

If students across multiple sixth-grade classrooms struggle with a particular mathematical concept, that pattern may prompt an examination of how the concept is introduced, what prerequisite knowledge students are expected to have, or whether instructional materials support the intended learning.

In High School

If screening or benchmark data consistently shows a weakness in a foundational skill among incoming ninth graders, that pattern can inform transition planning, core instructional priorities, professional learning, or resource allocation—not simply a list of students for intervention.

When working with a school district and reviewing screening data, a fourth-grade team noted that several students fell below benchmark in comparing two fractions with different numerators and denominators. The teachers’ immediate concern is appropriately student-centered: “Who is below benchmark? Which of these students need additional support, and what should we do next?”

Then one teacher asked a different question: “Are we seeing this in just my class?”

They pulled the results together across the grade level. The answer was no. The same skill was emerging as a concern in every fourth-grade classroom.

That changes the question. Instead of only asking, “Which students need intervention?” the team began asking, “Why are so many students arriving at this point with difficulty in the same area?”

Looking at additional evidence—student work, classroom assessments, and the curriculum sequence—they discovered that the skill has technically been taught, but students have had relatively few opportunities to apply it in increasingly complex tasks.

Now the response becomes broader.

Some students still need targeted support. But the team also decides the grade level needs to revisit how it addresses comparing fractions in Tier 1 instruction. They examine upcoming lessons, identify opportunities for additional practice, and determine that teachers would benefit from planning together around the skill.

The screening data didn’t tell them why students were struggling. It helped them realize that the problem might not belong only to the students who struggled.

Patterns Give Us Questions, Not Automatic Answers

The screener shows several students are scoring below grade-level expectations in addition and subtraction, so does that mean our resource needs to change? NO! Patterns in screener data lead to questions to investigate, not answers. Just because students are scoring low doesn’t mean our teachers aren’t teaching or our resources aren't high quality. But it opens the conversation about what additional evidence we need to understand this pattern.

We can pair screening data with other evidence to answer these additional questions.

The Practical Decisions Patterns Can Help Us Make

We have the screening data and additional evidence, but what do we do with it? We start making practical decisions for our classrooms, schools, and systems. Different patterns can lead to different decisions for different groups. There are five areas to examine for these decisions.

Four Shifts That Make Screening Data More Useful

We give the screener, we look at the screening data, we move on to teaching, but we’ve already investigated how we can use the data more effectively. Four shifts will help us progress toward stronger data use.

Shift 1: From Student Identification → Instructional Response

The first question still remains: “Which students may need additional support?”

But now we know we need to add: “What does the broader pattern suggest we should examine in instruction?”

These questions don't compete; they serve different purposes at different levels.

Shift 2: From Individual Data → Aggregated Patterns

We need to move from: “Here are the students who scored below benchmark.”

to: “What do we notice when we examine these results across classrooms, grades, skills, and time?”

The patterns provide several possible lenses to evaluate:

Shift 3: From Data Meetings → Data Inquiry

This shift is one of the strongest shifts for teachers. It moves from data meetings, where teachers review numbers, to data inquiry, where teachers begin with questions.

Instead of saying, “Let's look at the screening results.”

Teachers ask:

• “What patterns do we notice?”
• “What might explain them?”
• “What other evidence should we examine?”
• “What should we try or investigate next?”
• “What would we expect to see if our response is working?”

This keeps data use active and connected to action rather than turning it into compliance.

Shift 4: From More Data → Better Use of Existing Data

Districts can solve challenges by collecting more data, but not just through additional assessments. The additional data may be in the form of:

• looking at existing results differently
• aggregating information differently
• comparing patterns across classrooms or grades
• connecting screening data to student work
• revisiting results over time
• asking better questions.

In Summary: Look Beyond the List

Data can make students seem like just a number, but those numbers collectively can tell a bigger story about the classroom, grade level, curriculum, or system. It’s our collective effort to examine that data and find the patterns that can lead to better use of the resource, better alignment, better conversations about learning, and better overall educational outcomes. The most powerful use of screening data may not be identifying more students. It may be helping educators see their system more clearly so they can make more informed decisions about teaching and learning.