The Art and Science of Teaching
Robert J. Marzano
When Students
Track Their Progress
The strategy of tracking student progress on specific learning goals is well supported. For example, Fuchs and Fuchs1 found
that providing teachers with graphic displays of
students’ scores on formative assessments was
associated with a 26 percentile point gain in
achievement. Unfortunately, this strategy has not
received the attention it deserves.
When students track their own
progress on assessments using
graphic displays, the gains are even
higher. Over my many years of
working with teachers, I have had
the opportunity to examine the
effects of such an approach. In 14
different studies, teachers had
students in one class track their
progress on assessments; in a
second class, these teachers taught
the same content for the same
length of time without having
students track their progress (see
www.marzanoresearch.com/research/strategy20
_trackingprogress.aspx). On average, the practice
of having students track their own progress was
associated with a 32 percentile point gain in their
achievement.
In the studies, students recorded their scores
on a chart after taking each assessment. Figure 1
shows how a student tracked her progress on the
topic of habitats using her scores on four
different assessments. Using a rubric with a
rating scale of 0 to 4 to score the assessments,
this student began with a score of 1. 5 on the first
assessment and ended with a score of 3. 5 on the
fourth assessment.
This approach provides two kinds of information for students and teachers. First, the rubric
provides a description of the levels of performance that the teacher expects of the students.
Second, the graph provides a representation of
each student‘s progression of learning. The
combination of these two types of information
produces the powerful effect.
What Produces the Best Results?
Given the expected 32 percentile point gain, one
might assume that this strategy is a sure thing in
terms of enhancing student achievement. As is
often the case, however, the details of the studies
clarify the circumstances under which the
strategy produces strong, as opposed to
mediocre, results.
Teachers obtained the
best results when they
scored assessments using
a rubric instead of points.
; Address a single goal in all the assessments. To track student progress in the manner
depicted in Figure 1, all assessments must
address the same learning goal. For example,
assume that a teacher has two learning goals that
relate to the topic of habitats. One learning goal
might be, “The student will understand that
habitats provide plants and animals with the
things they need to survive.” A second learning
goal for this same topic might be, “The student
will understand how a local habitat of his or her
choice supports specific local animals.” The
assessments should clearly differentiate between
these two goals. One assessment can address
both goals, but only if the teacher assigns two
scores to the assessment—one for each learning
goal.
