Case Study: St. Mary's County Public Schools achieves higher student performance and graduation rates with PowerSchool Performance Matters Assessment

Using Data-Driven Instruction to Improve Student Performance

St. Mary's County Public Schools (SMCPS) is a rural Maryland district serving 27 schools and nearly 18,000 students. The district struggled to provide personalized instruction because assessment data were siloed in spreadsheets that couldn’t be disaggregated by item or standard, limiting teachers’ ability to identify precisely where individual students were struggling and to make data-informed decisions.

By adopting Performance Matters Assessment and an Early Warning System, SMCPS enabled teachers to create, share and analyze high-quality items (including technology-enhanced items), run district-wide "problems of the week" and problem-based assessments, and target at‑risk students quickly. As a result, the district saw gains in students performing at Proficient and Advanced levels, a rise in the four-year graduation rate to 93.5% (up 10.7% over five years), and a drop in the four-year cohort dropout rate from 10.98% to 4.44% over four years.

St. Mary’s County Public Schools

Regina Hurley Greely

Director of Learning Management