At City of Promise we are family focused and data driven. Over the past 3 years we have worked hard, along with our nonprofit partners, the schools, and our kids and families, to build a system that addresses pressing academic needs in Charlottesville. This dashboard provides a transparent look into the data that we are collecting and the progress that our kids and families are making. Our intent is to have an honest and thorough appraisal of what’s working and where future areas of opportunity exist.
Every kid deserves to learn to read.
Where this data comes from
All data is derived from the Virginia Language and Literacy Screening System (VALLSS) literacy screener, administered to the 19 K–4 students in City of Promise’s Community Schools cohort at Trailblazer Elementary. VALLSS is used to identify relative strengths and weaknesses in specific literacy skill areas, including both code-based and language comprehension skills. Each student is screened in fall, mid-year, and spring, producing a “scaled score,” a risk band, and subskill detail. This dashboard combines assessment data with attendance and other salient data points to show how the cohort is reading across the year and help identify drivers of positive change and future areas of opportunity.
19 students spanning grades K–4 participated in our afterschool tutoring program. However, we only have complete and longitudinal VALLSS data for 17 of those students, based on the testing schedule and parameters of VLP. We do not yet have school-based, spring literacy or attendance data for the students, and will update this dashboard as that data is released.
You can manipulate the data by grade and cohort size, isolating for students who are participating in a full suite of City of Promise initiatives and those who are only accessing tutoring services through our core partner, Virginia Literacy Partnerships (VLP).
All student names in this data dashboard have been deidentified. The data represented is real; however, the names of the students have been altered.
VALLSS scaled scores, by assessment period
Each bar represents a testing period — Fall, Mid-Year, and Spring scaled scores side-by-side. Students are sorted from left to right by total fall to spring gain (biggest movers on the left). Hover over each student to see a breakdown of their scores.
Scaled-score growth, Fall to Spring
Each line tracks one student from their Fall scaled score (gray dot) to Spring (colored dot). Students are sorted by total fall to spring growth, biggest movers on top. The endpoint color marks how much the scaled score climbed across the year.
How far each student is from escaping High Risk
The majority of our students are in the “high risk” band. The high risk band indicates a student is significantly behind in foundational literacy development and requires targeted, explicit instruction. This comes with in- and out-of-school intervention to support scaled score growth. Because VALLSS measures a “scaled” score, students can be improving their literacy but not as fast as the score is rising for the next assessment. The dashed line at 0 is the escape line — above it, the student has moved into the moderate or low risk bands. Below it, they're still in high risk.
Every student, every score
VALLSS measures decoding, encoding, and language comprehension by evaluating a variety of skills like phoneme segmentation, oral reading fluency, and identification of letter sounds. Click on a student to get a detailed view of their progress during school year 2025–2026.
| Name | Grade | Fall | Mid | Spring | Gain | Fall gap | Spring gap | Absences fall only | Tardies fall only |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saniyah Gaines | K | 501 | 594 | 632 | +131 | 18 | -21 | 2 | 1 |
| Amari Freeman | 1 | 572 | 613 | 629 | +57 | 32 | 22 | 1 | 3 |
| Imani Dupree | 1 | 551 | 577 | 614 | +63 | 53 | 37 | 3 | 3 |
| Ja'marion Goode | 1 | 575 | 622 | 637 | +62 | 29 | 14 | — | — |
| Jamari Dawson | 1 | 593 | 637 | 637 | +44 | 11 | 14 | 0 | 0 |
| Lamont Easley | 1 | 553 | 595 | 613 | +60 | 51 | 38 | — | — |
| Nyla Caldwell | 1 | 571 | 619 | 636 | +65 | 33 | 15 | 1 | 1 |
| Royal Brooks | 1 | 550 | — | 635 | +85 | 54 | 16 | 1 | 8 |
| Za'riah Tinsley | 1 | 599 | 637 | 648 | +49 | 5 | 3 | — | — |
| Bilal Ahmadi | 2 | 624 | 658 | 674 | +50 | 23 | -7 | — | — |
| DeShawn Mayfield | 2 | 594 | 652 | 651 | +57 | 53 | 16 | 6 | 13 |
| Khalil Sumter | 2 | 594 | 610 | 616 | +22 | 53 | 51 | 2 | 26 |
| Mariam Haidari | 2 | 615 | 614 | 630 | +15 | 32 | 37 | — | — |
| Nathan Pierce | 2 | 646 | 666 | 678 | +32 | 1 | -11 | — | — |
| Zuri Pryor | 2 | 622 | 647 | 648 | +26 | 25 | 19 | 2 | 12 |
| Jaylen Mayfield | 3 | 609 | 625 | 636 | +27 | 57 | 42 | 6 | 13 |
| Kiara Hampton | 3 | 675 | — | — | — | -9 | — | — | — |
| Marquis Toliver | 3 | 636 | — | — | — | 30 | — | 0 | 2 |
| Talia Brent | 3 | 653 | 663 | 669 | +16 | 13 | 9 | — | — |
Does attendance correlate to scaled-score gain?
X = absences + tardies (fall only — spring 2025–26 attendance not yet recorded). Y = VALLSS scaled gain (fall → spring). Outliers in the bottom-right are students with strong attendance but low gain. Outliers in the top-left are kids growing despite poor attendance.