In short
- A one-page report has five parts: the aim, how much pupils read, what changed, the cost in staff time, and the plan for next term.
- Five numbers carry the report: participation, amount read, level movement, words retained and attendance.
- A single headline number misleads, and a number that becomes a target gets distorted.
- State every gain with its comparison, its period and its number of pupils, and keep the same format when the term goes badly.
A board does not want a dashboard. It wants to know whether the reading program is working and what you will do next. Reports tend to fail in one of two ways. Some bury the board in charts. Others offer one impressive number with nothing to compare it to. This article gives a one-page structure, the five numbers that belong in it, and a template you can copy. It also explains why a single headline number misleads, and how to word a gain or a disappointing term.
What goes in a term reading report for a board?
A term reading report for a school board fits on one page and answers five questions in order. What did we set out to do? How much did pupils read? What changed? What did it cost in staff time? What will we do next term? Each answer takes two or three sentences and one or two numbers.
- What we set out to do. The aim you wrote at the start of term, in one sentence, with the classes and the number of pupils.
- How much pupils read. Participation and the amount read, for the whole group and for the pupils who read least.
- What changed. Level movement, words retained and attendance, each compared with the start of term.
- What it cost in staff time. Hours per week, and who gave them.
- What we will do next term. One or two decisions, each tied to a number in the report.
Keep the order. The board reads the aim first, so it can judge every later number against it.
Schildkamp (2019) describes data use in schools as a cycle. It starts with defining goals, moves through collecting data and making sense of it, and ends with improvement actions and evaluation. The report follows the same path.
Which numbers belong in the report, and which to leave out
Five numbers carry the report. Each one answers a question a board member would ask.
| Number | What it counts | The question it answers |
|---|---|---|
| Participation | Pupils who finished at least one story in the term, out of all pupils enrolled | Did the program reach everyone? |
| Amount read | Stories finished by the middle pupil, and by the lowest quarter of pupils | How much reading happened, and for whom? |
| Level movement | Pupils who moved up a level, or a step inside a level, since the start of term | Are pupils reading harder texts? |
| Words retained | Words from the stories that pupils still knew when checked some weeks later | Did the vocabulary stay? |
| Attendance | Sessions attended out of sessions offered | Did pupils turn up? |
Three of the five numbers are plain records of what pupils did. Level movement and words retained need a check of some kind. Schildkamp (2019) notes that data use often focuses on summative assessment data, although many other sources of evidence are available.
Leave the following out, or move them to an appendix.
- Total minutes or pages for the whole school. A big total with no comparison says nothing about any pupil.
- A class average on its own. An average can hide five pupils who read nothing. Give the lowest quarter beside it.
- Logins and clicks. They count activity on a screen. They do not count reading.
- A ranking of teachers. It invites the distortion described below.
For the wider set of measures a school might track, see KPIs & Metrics for a School Reading Program.
Why a single headline number misleads
A board likes one number, because it is easy to remember. It is also the easiest kind of report to get wrong, for three reasons.
The first reason is what a score is. Koretz (2008) describes a test as a sample. It is incomplete, and it is useful only if it represents the larger body of knowledge it stands for. A score describes some of what pupils can do. It does not explain why they can or cannot do it.
The second reason is arithmetic. 'The average pupil finished six stories' may mean that every pupil finished six. It may mean that half the class finished twelve and the other half finished none. One number cannot show who was left out.
The third reason is the reader. Mandinach and Gummer (2013) wrote about teacher preparation in the United States. They argued that policy requires educators to use data, while attention to building the skills to use it has not grown. Their subject is teachers. Our reading is that board members have had less training still, so put the comparison next to every number.
What happens when a measure becomes a target
Campbell (1979) warned that the more a number is used to make decisions, the more pressure there is to corrupt it. The number then distorts the work it was meant to monitor. He applied this to schools. When test scores become the goal of teaching, he wrote, they 'lose their value as indicators of educational status'.
Koretz (2008) describes the same effect in testing. He reports that high stakes often lead to inflated scores. An inflated score is one that has risen more than the learning behind it.
A reading program has its own versions. Set a target of stories finished, and pupils may pick the shortest stories or click through the pages. Set a target of quiz scores, and teachers may rehearse the quiz. These are examples, not findings from a study.
Three habits protect the report:
- Report numbers that check each other: amount read beside comprehension, level movement beside words retained.
- Do not tie pay, praise or rankings of staff to one number.
- Keep the definitions the same every term, and print them under the table.
How to describe a gain honestly
A gain is a claim. Every claim in the report needs four things beside it.
- Compared with what? The same pupils at the start of term, last year's class, or a class that did not take part. Say which.
- Over how long? Eleven weeks and a full year are different claims.
- For how many pupils? Give the number measured both times, and the number left out.
- How big is big? Give the size in plain units: stories, words, pupils who moved.
On the last question, Kraft (2020) is a useful guide. He drew on 747 randomised trials of education programs that used standardised tests. From these he proposed new benchmarks. An effect under 0.05 standard deviations is small, 0.05 to under 0.20 is medium, and 0.20 or more is large.
Two cautions from the same paper apply to a school report. First, the benchmarks are for studies that compare a program group with a control group. A before-and-after gain in one school is not that kind of study, so do not label it with them. Second, Kraft (2020) notes that effects are larger when the test is closely aligned with the program. So expect a quiz on the stories pupils read to show more gain than a general reading test.
Kraft (2020) also asks readers to weigh an effect against its cost. That is why staff time has its own line in the report. Level movement needs the most care of the five numbers. How to Measure CEFR Progress by Cohort explains how to count it.
A one-page template you can copy
The table below is the whole report. Write two or three sentences under each heading.
| Section | What to put | Where the number comes from |
|---|---|---|
| 1. What we set out to do | The aim in one sentence. The classes, the number of pupils and the number of reading weeks. | The plan written at the start of term |
| 2. How much pupils read | Participation. Stories finished by the middle pupil and by the lowest quarter. The number of pupils who finished none. | The reading record kept for each pupil |
| 3. What changed | Pupils who moved a level or a step, out of those checked twice. Words retained. Attendance. | Level checks in the first and last week, a delayed word check, and the register |
| 4. What it cost in staff time | Hours per week for teachers and for the coordinator. Anything that was dropped to make room. | A time log kept by staff for two ordinary weeks |
| 5. What we will do next term | One or two decisions, each tied to a number above. The date of the next report. | The team's review meeting |
Example report (an invented school with invented numbers)
Term 1 reading report. Grade 6, three classes, 78 pupils, 11 reading weeks.
1. Aim. Every Grade 6 pupil reads one levelled story a week at A2.
2. Reading. 71 of 78 pupils finished at least one story. The middle pupil finished 8. The lowest quarter finished 3 or fewer. Seven pupils finished none.
3. Change. 74 pupils were checked in week 1 and in week 11. Nine of them moved from A2 to A2+. None reached B1. Pupils still knew 62 of every 100 story words when checked four weeks later. Attendance was 84 per cent.
4. Staff time. Three teachers each gave about 40 minutes a week outside lessons. The coordinator gave one hour a week.
5. Next term. Meet the seven pupils who finished nothing and offer them A1 stories. Keep the aim. Report again in week 11 of Term 2.
Notice what the example does not claim. It does not say the program caused nine pupils to move. It gives no percentage gain. Parents need a different cut of the same record, which Reporting Reading Progress to Parents covers.
How to report a disappointing term
Report a bad term in the same format, with the same numbers, in the same order. A board that sees the format change will wonder what else changed.
- State the result plainly in the first line of section 3.
- Give the likely causes, and say which of them are guesses.
- Separate a failure of delivery from a failure of the idea. If pupils read half the planned stories, the program has not been tested yet.
- Say what you will change and what you will keep.
- Name the date of the next check.
Black and Wiliam (1998) reviewed about 250 publications on formative assessment, which is assessment used as feedback to modify teaching. They found firm evidence that strengthening frequent feedback to pupils yields substantial learning gains. Their review was about pupils in classrooms. Our reading is that a term report does the same job for a program. It exists to change what happens next term.
One poor term is also weak evidence. Koretz (2008) gives a chapter to error and reliability, the uncertainty attached to any test score. If the amount read was on plan and the result was flat, run one more term before you decide. Proving the ROI of a Reading Program to School Leaders covers what to do with mixed results from a pilot.
How iRead handles this
In iRead, school leaders see levels reached, words retained and stories completed, by class, grade and term. Attendance at sessions is recorded automatically. Every game clear and quiz answer feeds one progress record per word, and teachers see retention per word, per game and per class. A school can run a free pilot with one class for 4 to 6 weeks, with full dashboards, before any school-wide decision.
The core principle: Put the comparison next to every number. A gain without its starting point, its period and its number of pupils is not yet a finding.
See it in iRead: School leaders see levels reached, words retained and stories completed, by class, grade and term. A school can run a free pilot with one class for 4 to 6 weeks.
See what school leaders getKey takeaway
Write one page in five parts, report five numbers with their comparisons, and keep the format when the term goes badly. End with a decision.
Frequently asked questions
What should a reading program report to a school board include?
Five parts on one page: what you set out to do, how much pupils read, what changed, what it cost in staff time, and what you will do next term. Support them with five numbers: participation, amount read, level movement, words retained and attendance.
How do you report student progress to a school board honestly?
State every gain with four things: what it is compared with, over how long, for how many pupils, and how big it is in plain units. Say how many pupils were left out of the comparison. Do not claim that the program caused a change you only observed.
What counts as a large effect for an education program?
Kraft (2020) proposed benchmarks from 747 randomised trials with standardised test outcomes. Under 0.05 standard deviations is small, 0.05 to under 0.20 is medium, and 0.20 or more is large. They apply to studies with a control group, not to a before-and-after gain in one school.
How do you report a disappointing term to the board?
Use the same format and the same numbers as in a good term. State the result plainly, give the likely causes, and say which are guesses. Separate poor delivery from a poor idea. Then name what changes next term and the date of the next check.
Sources
- Kraft, M. A. (2020). Interpreting effect sizes of education interventions. Educational Researcher, 49(4), 241-253. doi.org/10.3102/0013189X20912798
- Campbell, D. T. (1979). Assessing the impact of planned social change. Evaluation and Program Planning, 2(1), 67-90. doi.org/10.1016/0149-7189(79)90048-X
- Koretz, D. (2008). Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us. Harvard University Press. www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674035218
- Schildkamp, K. (2019). Data-based decision-making for school improvement: Research insights and gaps. Educational Research, 61(3), 257-273. doi.org/10.1080/00131881.2019.1625716
- Mandinach, E. B., & Gummer, E. S. (2013). A systemic view of implementing data literacy in educator preparation. Educational Researcher, 42(1), 30-37. doi.org/10.3102/0013189X12459803
- Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 5(1), 7-74. doi.org/10.1080/0969595980050102