Evidence of Impact: Goalbook Pathways Leads to Literacy Growth
Study shows teacher usage of Goalbook Pathways has a positive impact on literacy scores for all Lima City School students
Summary
Evidentally, a research organization dedicated to providing K-12 educators with evidence of what will work in their schools, completed a district-wide study of educator usage of Goalbook Pathways in Lima City Schools in Lima, Ohio.
A first study, completed in August 2019, examined teacher usage patterns of Goalbook Pathways. It measured the association between product usage, student demographic information, and student growth outcomes on the Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI), a formative assessment administered in the fall, winter, and spring of a typical school year. This initial study showed a positive correlation between teachers using Goalbook Pathways to unpack literacy standards and an increase in student literacy scores. The strongest association to increased student outcomes was found in the sub-groups of eighth-grade students, black students, and male students.
The second study, a comparison study completed in March 2020, echoed positive findings from the initial correlation study. This study compared student growth on the SRI between a group of teachers using Pathways to a similar comparison group of teachers not using Pathways. The study consisted of data from three full years of Pathways implementation along with three years of student reading data from the SRI fall and spring test administrations from the 2016–2017, 2017–2018, and 2018–2019 school years.
The second study, using a comparison approach, further strengthened the initial findings from the first study, including:
- Goalbook Pathways had a positive impact on the percentage of students who achieved growth on the SRI reading assessment. The impact is estimated at 5.3 percentage points.
- Similar to the initial study, the strongest associations of teachers’ usage of Pathways to student growth were found for male students and black students.
- Teachers’ usage of Pathways at Lima City Schools had a positive impact on student growth for students at all levels of proficiency.
Background & Study Design
Lima City Schools (LCS) is a school district of nine schools serving K-12 students in Lima, Ohio. LCS serves a diverse student population, and of the 4,000 students that make up LCS, 99% qualify for free or reduced lunch. LCS implemented Goalbook Pathways in 2014.
This study meets the standards and criteria of Tier 2 evidence as outlined in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) as a well-designed and well-implemented quasi-experimental study, which demonstrates a statistically significant and positive association of teachers’ usage of Goalbook Pathways to student literacy growth. The formative measurement used to determine literacy growth was the Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI) for students in grades 3 through 8.
The study utilized a comparison group design. Students in classes with teachers who used Goalbook Pathways were included in the treatment group (1,091 students), while the remaining students were placed in the comparison group (3,191 students).
Unpacking the Results
As mentioned in the summary, this study found that Goalbook Pathways had a positive effect on student growth as evidenced by SRI assessment scores. This effect is estimated at 5.3 percentage points. The probability of literacy growth for students of teachers who use Goalbook Pathways was 52.1% compared with the 46.8% probability of growth for comparison students where teachers did not use Goalbook Pathways. Put another way: If the teachers who were not Pathways users had used Pathways to design instruction, 11% more students would have shown growth.
This positive impact was found for students at every proficiency level — the study found no evidence to support that the positive impact was only for high-performing students or any other group based on students’ pre-test level.
There were statistically significant differences in the data when it came to two categories of students — male students vs. female students (8.0 percentage points vs 2.6 percentage points), and for black students vs. non-black students (8.4 percentage points vs. 3.4 percentage points).
Using Goalbook Pathways to Increase Teacher Clarity
The teachers at LCS engage in Teacher-based Teams, an Ohio Statewide Improvement Process. Teams meet weekly for 45 minutes and begin by identifying the priority standard that will be addressed during the cycle and unwrapping it. This includes what the student will need to be able to do to master that standard along with any prerequisite skills.
Teams use Pathways to efficiently and effectively unpack the standards students need to learn, making it easier to create the aligned assessments and design instruction. Using Pathways, teachers gain a much-needed dose of clarity around understanding the standards students need to learn, how those standards are assessed, and how to unpack them correctly.
For instance, “Viewed Unpacked Standard,” the action in Goalbook Pathways that allows teachers to see all the pieces of a particular standard and contains instructional strategies for students of all levels, was the single best predictor of student outcomes — suggesting that when teachers understand how the learning expectations within a standard guide effective instructional planning, they design equally-effective instruction that can lead to increased student learning outcomes.
With the learning expectations within a standard clearly identified, teachers also use Pathways resources to construct pre- and post-assessments aligned to the success criteria of the standard. Assessment data allows teachers to determine what students know and identify common misconceptions and learning gaps that exist. This supports teachers with designing the instructional steps needed for teaching the standard in clear, replicable language.
Efficiency & Confidence for Educators
Goalbook Pathways supports the cadence of instructional planning for teacher-based teams as well as an individual teacher’s planning cycle. As educators are consistently being asked to do more with the same amount of time, Pathways increases teacher efficiency and efficacy in the instructional planning process.
Pathways provides teachers with end-to-end resources to support a weekly, standards-based instructional planning cycle. These resources include rigorous, formative assessments that allow teachers to measure student progress for continuous, data-driven decision-making and printable instructional strategies.
The results of this study and the integration of Goalbook Pathways into Lima City’s teacher-based teams parallels Goalbook’s mission — to empower educators to transform instruction so that all students succeed.
In a new age of education, where educators may be teaching remotely more than ever before, Goalbook Pathways also creates efficiencies through easy digital access, making continued teacher collaboration a seamless experience aimed at increasing positive student learning outcomes.
Goalbook is committed to supporting independent research that helps deepen our collective understanding of how to improve instructional outcomes and promote continuous improvement.
Goalbook Toolkit & Pathways meet the standards of research and evidence aligned to the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (2015).
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