WISEdash for Districts Cohort Trends Dashboard

Overview | Demographics Chart | Enrollment | Absenteeism | Statewide Exams | Growth | EL Progress | MAP Exam | STAR Exam | Discipline | HS Completion | Dropouts | Combining Cohorts

Overview

The Cohort Trends dashboard is a tool to view the progress and outcomes for a single set of students (a cohort) as they move through the grade levels and school years.  This differs from other WISEdash trends charts that tend to report on different or changing sets of students for each school year.  The set of students that are included on this dashboard are the students that completed (or are projected to complete) the first grade in the selected year.  This is called the 1st Grade Cohort.  For clarity, the display of this value also includes the projected year of normal HS graduation (class of) based on that 1st grade year.  Note: (class of) is not the same as a Grad Cohort.  The student's Grad Cohort is not assigned until the student enters high school and may be different than the (class of) displayed with their 1st Grade Cohort due to accelerated advancement or repeating grade levels. 

It is also important to understand that the exact list of students does vary somewhat from school year to school year.  Students that transfer in or out of the district/school change the makeup of that cohort for subsequent years.  There is a method you can use to fix the set of students through the years on these charts.  This method is described later on this page.

Another significant difference is that all available topics are provided on this one dashboard.  You control which topics or charts are displayed by selecting value(s) for the Show Charts filter under the Filter Data dropdown.  Select only the charts on which you wish to focus during this interaction.

Key filters to set for this dashboard:

• Show Charts - select the topic(s) you want displayed
• 1st Grade Cohort (Class of) - the set of students to be included on these charts
• Grade Advancement - whether to further restrict the set of students to those that have advanced one grade every year (Typical), accelerated one or more grades per year (Advanced),  have repeated one or more grades (Retained) or all students in the cohort (All Grade Advancements)
• Test Subject - the subject that will be displayed for the assessment charts

Demographics Chart

This chart displays the distribution of several demographics among the selected cohort.  The values are the current value (for active students) or the most recently reported value (for inactive students).  This chart is not drillable, and the demographic filters under Filter Data are not applied.  The shading of the green bars has no significance other than to demark the groups of students with each demographic value.

You may find it useful to refer back to this distribution while analyzing other charts on this dashboard.

Enrollment

The counts of students in each grade level across the years.  Note that this chart visualizes the impact of adjusting the Grade Advancement filter - Typical grade advancement results in only a single grade level per year, while All Grade Advancements may show several grade levels per year.

This chart is a useful reference for recalling which grade level generally applies to which year on other charts.

Absenteeism

The percentage of students in the cohort that have been absent 10 or more school days during the school year.

Statewide Exams

The DPI performance categories for the statewide exams taken by the cohort each year.  The exams that are included in the chart (depending on the year and grade level) are the WKCE/WAA-SwD exam, Badger/DLM exam, Forward/DLM exam, Aspire/DLM exam and the ACT/DLM exam.  The selection of the Grade Advancement filter has a significant effect on the content of this chart.  Using Typical grade advancement enables the display of the grade level and major exam name on the x-axis and the display of the statewide percentage of students with either Advanced or Proficient categories using black dots on the bars.

Full Academic Year (FAY) filtering is not applied to this chart.  It includes all students in the cohort that tested in the selected district/school each year.

Growth

The cohort's growth level (low, typical, high) on the statewide exams using the Student Growth Percentile (SGP) method.  Students are only included in the SGP calculations if they have tested for two consecutive years in adjacent grade levels.  The distribution of growth levels across all districts is Low (34.7%), Typical (31.0%) and High (34.3%).  This distribution varies slightly from year to year.

EL Progress

English language progress for English language learners in the cohort.  Two charts are provided.  ACCESS Overall Performance displays the ACCESS for ELLs test results for students in the cohort.  The number of students tested each year is diminished as the students reach English proficiency, and is increased as new EL students join the cohort.  The English Proficiency chart shows the progression of EL proficiency across the years for the cohort.  Students in the cohort that have never been English learners are not included in these charts.

MAP Exam

For districts that use the MAP exam by NWEA and have shared those results with DPI.  The chart shows the percentage of tested students in the cohort that met or exceeded the national mean score for that subject.  Note that the number of students tested by districts tends to diminish as students advance to high school.

STAR Exam

For districts that use the STAR exam by Renaissance Learning and have shared those results with DPI.  Two charts are provided.  The Fall Percent Meeting Performance Benchmarks shows the cohort's test results as correlated to the WI Forward statewide exam (a Renaissance determination).  The content of this chart is limited to the extent of data provided by the test vendor.  The Fall Percent RtI Category provides the breakdown of the cohort's test results into the typical Response to Intervention (RtI) categories as calculated by DPI using the results' national percentile rankings.

Discipline

The percent of the cohort that had disciplinary removals.  For cohort students to be included in the denominator of this chart, they must have been enrolled in the district/school at some point during that school year.

HS Completion

The count of the number of students in the cohort that received a high school completion credential each year.  Students that initially receive other than a regular diploma and continue towards earning a regular diploma may be counted more than once on this chart.

Dropouts

The count of the number of students in the cohort that dropped out of school each year.  Students that return to school more than one year after dropping out are still included in this chart.  If those students drop out again, they are counted again.

Combining 1st Grade Cohort with Student Cohort

If you wish to limit the students included in the charts on this dashboard to students that in fact did attend 1st grade in the selected district/school, then follow these simple steps.

1. Click Filter Data.  Set the following filters: Show Charts: Enrollment, 1st Grade Cohort (Class of): [your choice], Grade Advancement: Typical, and any other filters you wish to use to limit the students.
2. Click (drill) on the bar that corresponds to grade 1.
3. Click the checkbox at the top of the student list to select the entire list.
4. Click the Actions button, then Add to Group.
5. Click Create New Group in the popup window.
6. Type a name for this group of students and click Save.  The new group will be saved.
7. Return to the Cohort Trends dashboard and click Filter Data.
8. Set the Student Cohort filter to the new group you just created.

The data on this dashboard will then be limited to just those students in that group, and omit students that transferred into your district/school after 1st grade.