How AdaptEd measures mastery

The rules below are the ones the code actually applies. They are written down so a teacher, a principal, or a parent can check any number we report and see exactly which student work produced it — and which work we deliberately left out.

1. What counts as evidence

Not every answer a student gives is evidence of mastery. AdaptEd admits a student's answer into the standards record only when all four of these are true:

  • It was summative. The answer came from the Solo Run (independent practice) or the Exit Assessment — the parts of a lesson where the student works without support.
  • It was the first try. Only the student's first answer to a question counts. Re-answering after feedback, and retaking the whole lesson later, do not add to the record.
  • It was unaided. Guided practice and direct instruction — where the reference material is on screen and retrying is encouraged — are excluded on purpose.
  • The teacher didn't void it. An attempt a teacher discards for an integrity concern leaves the record entirely, including on a rebuild.

Excluded work is not wasted work. Guided practice still surfaces misconceptions and still schedules spaced review — it just doesn't get to move a mastery claim while the student is still learning the standard.

2. Where the evidence comes from

Four sources feed one record, and they are tracked separately so we can always say which is which:

  • Lesson work — Solo Run and Exit Assessment answers.
  • Benchmark imports — results a campus imports from its own benchmark administration.
  • Spaced review — the retrieval checks that come back days or weeks after the lesson.
  • Auto-graded assigned work — activity items scored deterministically by the server.

For the headline number the four are pooled into a single proportion: correct answers ÷ admissible attempts.

3. Why every score carries a range

A percentage on its own hides how much work it rests on. Three out of three is 100%, and it means very little. So alongside the score AdaptEd reports a 95% Wilson score interval — the range the student's true rate plausibly sits in, given how many attempts we actually have. Few attempts produce a wide range; more attempts narrow it.

The interval is not decoration. It gates the top band.

4. What "Mastered" requires

A standard is only asserted at the top band when both of these hold:

  • at least 5 admissible attempts, and
  • the lower bound of the 95% interval clears 70.

This is what stops a lucky 5-for-5 — a point estimate of 100% whose lower bound is around 57 — from being reported as mastery. Below that bar the claim caps at the band beneath it, no matter how high the raw percentage looks.

Bands follow the familiar four-level Texas structure: Did Not Meet, Approaches, Meets, Masters.

5. A mastery claim can be taken back

Most systems only ratchet upward: once a standard is marked mastered it stays marked. AdaptEd's record can move in both directions, because the same rules that granted the claim keep running after it is granted.

  • A failed spaced review folds back into the same pooled evidence and recomputes the score, the interval and the band. If the learning didn't hold, the band comes down.
  • An unresolved misconception on a standard holds the band at Meets until it's addressed, even when the raw percentage would allow more.

Every band change is dated, and the Evidence Record for a student shows what moved it.

6. What this is not

Being clear about the edges matters more than sounding impressive:

  • AdaptEd does not produce a national percentile, a grade-equivalent score, or a predicted state-test result. It has no norming sample and makes no claim to one.
  • It is not a screening instrument and is not on any state eligibility list.
  • It does not select items adaptively from a calibrated bank. What adapts is the instruction — when a student struggles, the lesson can reteach that slide differently.
  • Its evidence base is a logic model (ESSA Tier 4). There is no efficacy study behind it yet, and we don't imply otherwise. For context, no high-school science program currently carries an ESSA rating above that tier either.

7. Check it yourself

Every number described here is auditable per student, per standard. The Evidence Record lists the attempts that counted, the attempts that were excluded and why, the band history with the reason for each move, and any reteaching that happened in between. A teacher can open it from the Standards Mastery page and print it.

If a rule on this page and the behaviour of the product ever disagree, the product is wrong and we want to know. Last reviewed July 2026.