Learning Forward
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More than just a score: Collaborative progress monitoring
By Jacobē Bell and Jen Gowers
Categories: Continuous improvement, Data, Reaching all studentsDecember 2025
Struggling learners often experience progress monitoring as a series of boring or mysterious tests that determine their fate, while teachers often feel overwhelmed by data systems that leave them unable to make timely instructional adjustments or help their students understand their own learning trajectories. A valuable opportunity for engagement and democratization lies in reimagining progress monitoring as a collaborative, transparent process that builds student agency. Providing all learners, especially struggling learners, with accessible tools to track their growth, celebrate incremental gains, and identify next steps transforms assessment from an external judgment into an internalized process for learning. This helps struggling students develop what researchers call academic identity, a sense of themselves as capable learners who can improve through effort and strategy (Cohen & Garcia, 2014).
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References
Cohen, G.L. & Garcia, J. (2008). Identity, belonging, and achievement: A model, interventions, implications. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17(6), 365-369.
Dr. Jacobē Bell is a transformative educational leader, currently serving as a Network Director with expertise in culturally responsive school improvement. With over 20 years of experience as a National Board Certified Teacher, Instructional Coach, Network Administrator, and Consultant across public and charter sectors, Jacobē specializes in supporting school transformation, developing impactful instructional coaches, mentoring educators, and helping leaders build strategic, student-centered systems. She is the author of Reclaiming Authenticity: Unearth Your True Self and Build an Equitable Classroom, which empowers educators to create dynamic classrooms where all students flourish.
Jen Gowers has served in New York City public and public charter education for over 20 years. Currently serving as an educational consultant and coach, she has expertise in managing principals, assistant superintendents, and network teams, teaching young people in elementary school through graduate school, facilitation, curriculum design, instruction, professional development and assessment practices, as well as experience building and sustaining schools and networks from PreK-12. Jen is passionate about working in solidarity to positively transform systems, to develop individual capacity and potential, and to make a brighter and better society.
Categories: Continuous improvement, Data, Reaching all students
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