Resources in the How to Monitor Student Outcomes category forms the bulk of the Student Outcomes Monitoring Toolkit, offering a rich variety of resources on tracking and assessing student progress across academic and non-academic domains (such as social and emotional learning). The resources cater to a broad audience, including teachers, school leaders, and MERL (Monitoring, Evaluation, Research, and Learning) staff, and span all educational levels from pre-primary to secondary.
Resources in this category focus a lot on how to measure academic skills for the purposes of summative and formative assessment. A significant portion of these resources also focuses on foundational learning, with toolkits and guides for Early Grade Reading and Mathematics Assessments (EGRA and EGMA) and tools for monitoring SDG 4.1.1. These are designed to measure fundamental literacy and numeracy skills, primarily in lower and upper primary students.
Another key theme is the measurement of non-academic outcomes, particularly Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) and student well-being. SEL measurement is conducted for many purposes, but most often to equip educators with data and feedback to help them inform their instruction and training on how to support students to develop holistically. Resources in this sub-group provide frameworks, assessment tools, and practical guides for implementing and evaluating SEL competencies. For instance, the "Choosing and Using SEL Competency Assessments" guide assists school leaders in selecting appropriate SEL measurement tools, while the "Data triangulation for measuring Social-Emotional Learning" resource presents innovative, theory-based approaches to data collection. These resources are aimed at a wide range of users, from teachers to researchers, and cover all school levels.
The category also includes resources on developing and implementing various forms of assessment, such as formative assessments, self-reports, observational checklists, and rubrics – which can be used to develop holistic outcomes – and standardized tests most often associated with measuring academic mastery. The "Test construction guidelines" and "Guide to Formative Assessment Rubrics" provide practical, step-by-step instructions for creating effective assessment instruments. These resources are highly relevant for teachers and MERL staff and are applicable across all educational stages.
Once you have defined your prioritized student outcomes to measure, this category provides the "how-to" for measurement. It is the largest and most practical category, filled with a diverse range of evidence-based tools, guides, and toolkits for collecting data on student learning and well-being.
What This Category Offers:
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Robust Assessment Toolkits: This section contains highly-rated, comprehensive toolkits for core academic skills and foundational learning. The Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) Toolkit and Early Grade Mathematics Assessment (EGMA) Toolkit are cornerstones for measuring foundational learning in lower primary and are designed for adaptation across contexts.
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Rich Resources for Non-Academic Skills: There is a strong focus on measuring SEL, well-being, and soft skills. User-friendly and highly relevant resources like "Choosing and Using SEL Competency Assessments" and the "Are you ready to assess social and emotional learning and development?" toolkit provide clear guidance for selecting appropriate tools for upper primary and secondary students. The Data triangulation for measuring social-emotional learning resource offers guidance for how to most accurately measure SEL from various perspectives.
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Practical Guidance on Tool Development and Use: You can find resources that guide you through the entire assessment process. "Test construction guidelines" offers advice on item writing and rubric development. "Measuring Student Well-being: Adaptation and implementation guide" shows how to modify existing tools for your specific needs. Many resources here, like the user-friendly and highly relevant INEE Measurement Library, have an additional alignment with "What to do with your monitoring data," as they include materials on data analysis and interpretation.
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Formative Assessment for the Classroom: Several resources, such as "Assessment to Inform Instruction: Formative Assessment," are specifically designed to help teachers integrate assessment directly into their instructional practice to monitor student progress in real-time.
How to Leverage This Category's Utility:
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For MERL Staff: This is your primary repository for building a comprehensive student outcomes measurement plan Select and adapt tools that align directly with the outcomes your organization prioritized. Use the technical guides to ensure your measurement strategy is rigorous and valid.
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For Teachers: Explore the resources on formative assessment to gather timely evidence of student learning. Use the "Student Outcomes Tracker Guide and Template" for a user-friendly way to consolidate and track the academic and non-academic growth of your students.
Linkages to Other Categories: This category is the implementation phase of your MERL plan.
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It operationalizes the goals from How to Prioritize Student Outcomes by providing the tools to measure them.
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It generates the raw data that becomes the input for What to do with your Monitoring Data. Without monitoring, there is no data to analyze.
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The selection and implementation of these monitoring tools are key activities within the systems described in How to Support Teaching and Learning using your Student Outcomes Data.