Let’s examine scores for an individual child.  Marzano uses the term “learning trend” to represent how much learning has occurred over time toward a benchmark.  For the child below, the average rubric score is 3.0. Since the first score of 2.0 was much lower than the later scores, it pulled down the average.  The child has gained a considerable amount of knowledge from the first to the last assessment, but this is not considered in an average. By measuring the “learning trend” the child was not penalized since he or she was still learning the concept on the first assessment.  The “learning trend” measures the learning from the first to the last assessment and shows the child’s rubric score as 3.5.  The rubric score of 3.5 best represents this child’s learning and the average underestimates this child’s learning.

The trend grade will show after 4 assessments for that particular skill.