The Inventory is designed for specialists and interventionists to use with students who have the most complex learning profiles — students whose data spans multiple grade levels within a single subject, whose progress has stalled despite intervention, or whose pattern of learning the Screener and Diagnostic have not been able to fully explain.
The Inventory takes between 20 and 80 minutes or more to complete, depending on the student's level. It is administered in 15- to 20-minute sessions over several days and can be given in a group setting.
What questions does the Inventory answer?
Where the Screener identifies the level of learning and the Diagnostic identifies which grade-level skills the data indicates need attention, the Inventory maps the full architecture of a student's learning across 12 dimensions — showing exactly where within each dimension a student's understanding is solid and where it breaks down.
A student with consistently declining Math Screener scores may have data showing algebra, applications, and operations at grade level — while measurement, geometry, data, and graphs are several years below. Those four dimensions share something: they all involve visual representations of mathematical learning. The Inventory makes that pattern visible. The Screener and Diagnostic cannot.
How the Inventory works
The Inventory is adaptive. Each dimension spans PK through grade 8. By default, the assessment begins two grade levels below the student's enrolled grade level, establishing where understanding is solid before identifying where it breaks down. The assessment then adapts upward or downward based on the student's pattern of responses. Educators can override the default starting level if they have reason to begin at a different point.
The Inventory does not ask every question in every dimension. When a student's response pattern is consistent enough, the system projects whether the student would have answered unasked questions correctly or incorrectly. These projected responses are shown alongside actual responses in the results.
The Inventory does not produce an overall standardized score. There is no scale score, percentile, or grade-level equivalent. The value of the Inventory is entirely in the dimension-level detail — seeing precisely where within each dimension a student's learning sits across grade levels.
The 12 dimensions
Math Inventory: Concept of Number, Measurement, Geometry, Data, Graphs, Algebra, Place Value, Fluency, Applications, Operations, Mathematical Language, Patterns
ELA Inventory: Decoding Nonsense Words, Decoding Real Words, Grammar, Listening Comprehension, Reading Comprehension Informational (Inferential), Reading Comprehension Literature (Inferential), Reading Comprehension (Surface), Segmenting Syllables, Sight Words Recognition, Spelling, Vocabulary, Writing
Dimensions ar
e distinct from the domains reported on the Screener and the skills reported on the Diagnostic. A domain is a component of a subject at a single grade level. A skill is a specific ability within a grade level. A dimension spans the full developmental range from PK through grade 8 within a single area of learning — which is what allows the Inventory to map how far back a student's understanding goes and how high it extends.
What the Inventory does not tell you
The Inventory maps the architecture of how a student learns. It does not diagnose conditions or disabilities. Diagnosis is outside the scope of any True Progress assessment.
The Inventory is not a universal screener and is not a replacement for the Screener or the Diagnostic. It is reserved for students whose profiles require the deepest level of visibility. For most students, the Screener and Diagnostic provide sufficient information to guide instruction.
When to use the Inventory instead of the Diagnostic
Use the Diagnostic when a student's Screener data indicates learning below curriculum expectations and the team needs to identify which grade-level skills need instructional attention.
Use the Inventory when the learning profile is more complex — when the data suggests that needs span multiple grade levels, when standard intervention has not produced expected progress, or when the team needs to understand the full range of a student's learning before deciding what to address and in what order.