The teacher administered multiple diagnostics at the beginning of the year and has diagnostic data on all of her students (i.e., "The first thing I did at the very beginning of the year was administer a set of comprehensive diagnostics to my students.").

The teacher administers "summative assessments to determine student performance" in the form of district benchmark tests, with questions aligned to specific standards (i.e. "To track how far my students are moving on the standards I've identified, I use district-administered benchmark tests, which all of my students take every six weeks.").

The teacher does not administer formative assessments.

The teacher "efficiently grades in a way that helps students understand their performance and where they are in relation to the big goal," by sitting down with students in the week after the benchmark exams are returned and guiding students to fill out their personal tracking sheets to see which objectives they have mastered (i.e., "So, for example, after they took the first benchmark, I sat down with about five students every day for a week and reviewed the test. I said, "Put a smiley face next to numbers 1, 5, 9, 11, and 15. If you got at least four of those correct, you mastered objective 16c. Highlight that on your sheet." When I do it like this as a whole class, I sometimes also say, "Who was able to fill in 16c? Raise your hand!" Those students do and I highlight their boxes in my spreadsheet as well."). Meeting with students in small groups to review grades on summative assessments and track progress every six weeks is an efficient strategy to update students on their academic growth and encourage investment. However, if the teacher increased the frequency of her assessments, it would not be efficient to review all test results with students in this way.

There is insufficient evidence that the teacher "grades in ways that help individual students learn their strengths and weaknesses."

The teacher tracks students performance "periodically:" every six weeks when benchmark exams are returned.

The teacher does not track student performance "regularly," which would require her to track students’ progress during a unit, approximately once a week.

Also, the teacher is not able to track students’ performance frequently enough so that she could "use data to inform short- and long-term planning and differentiation." She reports that by the time she gets data back from a benchmark assessment and enters it into her tracking system, she is already teaching the next unit and does not know how to re-plan for her data given its timing (i.e., "The thing is, each benchmark tests an entirely different set of objectives and by the time I get the results back from the last unit and process them in my tracking system, we're well into the next unit and into prepping for the next benchmark.").