Skill Mastery: How It's Measured
Skill mastery reflects what a student has demonstrated they can do during instruction. It’s worth knowing exactly what moves it, because assessments and skill mastery measure different things.
What Updates Skill Mastery
Skill mastery updates from activity data only. As students work through activities during lessons, their performance on those activities is what raises or updates their skill mastery. This is the single source that feeds a student’s per-skill mastery.
What Does Not Update Skill Mastery
Assessment scores do not update skill mastery. A pre-assessment or post-assessment measures growth at the group level, and that performance feeds group-level growth signals - never an individual student’s skill mastery. So a student’s post-assessment result won’t change their mastery of any specific skill; only their activity work does that.
Why the Two Are Kept Separate
Assessments and activities answer different questions. Assessments show how a group has grown over a domain, which is what the Growth Report reflects. Skill mastery shows what each student has demonstrated skill by skill during instruction. Keeping them separate means each measure stays a clean signal of what it’s meant to track.