For example, most students will make expected progress from the fall assessment to the winter assessment. For these students, because of their increased learning over the past few months, they will be able to handle and will see more challenging test questions on their winter assessment than what they experienced in the fall. However, for a struggling student who has yet to make much progress over the past few months, the winter assessment questions could be the same difficulty as the fall.

The norms do change from assessment window to assessment window for the screener assessments. These are the percentile scores as well as the colors in the graphs. For example, a grade one student might score 472 in the fall, which would be blue (on grade level). If that student earned a score of 472 in the winter, it would be yellow (borderline) because the peer group of first-grade students across the country made progress while this student did not. By the end of the year, if this student scored 472, it would be in red (at-risk) because the peer group has made progress over the year, reflected in the updated norms for each test window.