The Growth Trends report lets you pick up to ten assessments and see, side by side, how your students' performance changed across the series. It's designed for school and district admins who want a quick read on growth across multiple formatives.
Note: Growth Trends is an admin-only report. You'll only see it if you have an admin role.
What is the Growth Trends comparison?
Instead of opening separate reports and comparing them by hand, Growth Trends puts up to ten assessments in one view and does the comparison for you. You select your assessments in the filter sidebar, arrange them in your preferred order, run the report, and Formative shows two charts: one for overall performance and one for growth on the standards the two assessments share.
The Data You Can Pull & Insights You Can Gain
This report gives administrators a clear read on academic progress over time, allowing you to pull:
Overall Performance Data: Average scores and student distribution across your school's custom performance bands.
Longitudinal Performance Trajectories: Because you can plot up to 10 assessments side-by-side, administrators can track a cohort's performance trend across an entire term or school year, rather than just a single "before and after" snapshot.
Standards Growth Data: Average percentage-point growth on the specific standards shared across the series of assessments.
Detailed Step-by-Step Standards Mastery: The standards chart shows not only the start-to-finish change, but also the step-by-step detail across the entire assessment series. This allows admins to pinpoint exactly when learning occurred or if comprehension dipped during a specific unit.
Targeted Demographic Data: Performance broken down by specific schools or individual teachers using built-in filters.
By reviewing this data, administrators can quickly gauge whether instructional strategies across the series of assessments successfully drove student growth. It reveals the "big picture" of overall improvement, while the standards view highlights exactly which concepts students mastered and which ones still require additional support or curriculum adjustments.
Find the Growth Trends report
From the left-side Admin Tools navigation, go to Reports.
Select the Growth Trends tab. You'll find it just to the right of Common Assessments.
Run a comparison
Open the Filters sidebar on the left side of the report
Search for and select up to ten assessments you wish to compare
Use the drag handles next to each assessment to arrange them into your preferred chronological order. The numbered positions (1-10) indicate the order they will appear in your trend charts, from oldest to newest.
Select Run report
(Note: If users access the report via a pre-configured shared link, the report will automatically run with the filters selected)
Formative generates the comparison and displays your results below. You can change either assessment and run the report again at any time.
Tip: Pick assessments that cover the same standards. The growth chart compares the standards the assessments have in common — if they don't share any, that chart won't have anything to plot.
Drill Down with Scope Selectors
To gain more specific insights, you can refine your report view using the Scope selector available at the top of the report. This allows you to break down growth data across different levels of your organization:
Site Scope (Standards Growth by School): District administrators can switch to the Site scope to view a dedicated report comparing how different campuses are performing on the exact same series of assessments. This helps identify which schools might need additional resources or support.
Peer Scope (Standards Growth by Teacher): Administrators can switch to the Peer scope to filter the data by individual instructors and see how specific classrooms progressed.Combining these drill-downs allows you to pinpoint highly specific data—such as comparing how a particular standard grew in one school versus another, or isolating the data of a specific grade-level team.
Combining these scopes allows you to pinpoint highly specific data—such as comparing how a particular standard grew in one school versus another, or isolating the data of a specific grade-level team.
Pro-Tip!
Collaborate with Shareable Links: Once you have selected your assessment series and generated a report, you can easily share that exact view with other administrators in your organization.
Simply copy the URL from your browser's address bar and share it. When your colleague clicks the link, the page will automatically run the report with the filters seamlessly collapsed, bypassing the setup steps so you can jump straight into data analysis together. (Note: The recipient must also have admin permissions to view the data).
Understanding your results
Once the report runs, you'll see two charts.
Overall performance
This chart compares the assessments side by side:
There is one bar for each assessment in your series.
Each bar breaks down how students were distributed across performance bands (the score ranges your school uses, from lower to higher).
Each assessment also shows its average score, so you can see at a glance whether the class average moved up.
Hover any bar to see the exact number of students in each band, along with the average score for that assessment.
In short: this is the "big picture" view — did overall performance improve from the first to the last assessment?
Average per-student growth on standards
This chart zooms in on the individual standards the assessments share. Each standard shows its start-to-finish change plus the step-by-step detail across the series.
A dot's left-to-right position shows the average growth students made on that standard, in percentage points — the farther right, the more growth.
A dashed vertical line marks the overall average growth across all standards, so you can quickly spot which standards grew more or less than average.
Hover a dot to see the standard, its average growth, and the number of students.
Hover a standard code along the left edge to read that standard's full description.
In short: this is the "which standards moved" view — it helps you see where students grew the most and where they may still need support.
Best Practices for Growth Trends Comparisons
Align Your Assessments: Because the growth chart relies on common standards, ensure the selected assessments heavily assess the exact same set of standards to get the most valuable data.
Ensure Consistent Testing Conditions: To get an accurate measure of growth, encourage teachers to administer the assessments under similar conditions (e.g., time limits, available resources).
Leverage the Teacher Filter for Collaboration: Use the Teacher drill-down to identify educators whose students showed exceptional growth on specific standards. Encourage them to share their successful instructional strategies with their Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) or grade-level teams.
Identify Curriculum Gaps: Use the "Average per-student growth on standards" chart to spot standards with low or negative growth across multiple schools or teachers. Use this insight to drive targeted district-wide curriculum adjustments or direct professional development.
Good to know
If the selected assessments don't share any standards, the growth chart shows a short message instead of dots — pick a pair that shares standards to see growth.
If neither assessment has graded student responses yet, the report will let you know there's no data to compare. Try a different pair.