Twin Falls School District Data Day provides schools a chance to evaluate progress

TWIN FALLS, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) — Once a year, teachers across Twin Falls School District take the day to evaluate students’ scores, determining how close, or far, they are from their educational goals.

Due to the pandemic, this year’s scores are lower than administrators would like.

“Students are coming in lower than we would like them to be,” said Oregon Trail Elementary School Principal Tyler Matlock, “that’s to be expected a little bit because we didn’t have everyday instruction last year, in person.”

The pandemic created many obstacles for students, resulting in varied test scores for many returning to the classroom, but teachers have a plan to bring students back up to par.

“Today what we are doing is looking at the assessment data,” Matlock said, “using that data to make diagnoses of what kids need, educationally speaking.”

Katrina Hall, a first-grade teacher at Lincoln Elementary, says her students are having the most variance in language comprehension.

Her classes will identify intervention groups, that allow teachers to be more hands-on with students who need it most.

“A lot of our interventions are small group-based,” Hall said, “so we’ll have five to six kiddos with one teacher, and we can be direct and specific that way.”

As students progress or regress, intervention groups can be adjusted to match the needs of each student.

“Those groupings are also flexible,” said Hall, “so if we see that they are improving quickly that we can move them to where they need to be, so they are not staying in one spot for too long.”

Challenges lie ahead for all students, teachers and administrators, but many, like Principal Matlock, are confident they are up to the task.

“Teachers are practitioners of education,” Matlock said, “much like doctors are practitioners of medicine. We follow a process of assessment, diagnostics and follow through.”

Matlock also said there will be weekly meetings, every Monday, for teachers to reevaluate the groupings made this week, ensuring students can progress as much as possible.

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