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 teachers who want a quick read on growth across multiple formatives.
Note: The Growth Trends report is a feature available to teachers on School & District plans only.
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 assessments share.
The Data You Can Pull & Insights You Can Gain
This report gives educators 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, you can track your classes' performance trends 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 you to pinpoint exactly when learning occurred or if comprehension dipped during a specific unit.
By reviewing this data, you can quickly gauge whether your instructional strategies 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 targeted reteaching.
Find the Growth Trends report
From the left-side navigation menu, go to Reports.
Select the Growth Trends tab. You'll find it next to Tracker and Progress.
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 you 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.
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 your colleagues or PLC team!
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.
Important Note on Shared Links:
The teacher version of this report is strictly scoped to the viewing teacher's roster. If you share a link with a colleague, they will see the report run for their own students on those same assessments, not your students. (The recipient must also have a qualifying School & District plan to view the report).
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 might need additional support or reteaching.
Troubleshooting
Blank Standards Growth Chart
Issue: No data is plotting on the standards growth chart despite selecting multiple assessments.
Solution: The selected assessments must share common standards to plot data on the growth chart. Verify that the assessments you are comparing are aligned to the exact same standards. (If they do not share standards, your Overall Performance chart will still populate, but the standards chart will remain blank).
Locked Tab or Access Error on Shared Links
Issue: The Growth Trends tab is greyed out with a premium symbol, or you received an error when clicking a colleague's shared link.
Solution: You must have an active School & District plan to view the tab or open a shared link.