At Cobb Middle School in Frisco ISD, sixth-grade language arts teachers Katie Tarka, Michelle Strauser, and Brooke Arneson focused their 2023–24 goal on TEKS 6.5G: evaluating details to determine key ideas. Their planning document connected that goal to common assessments, classroom instruction, and regular review. Team goal worksheet.
Their presentation reported 52.3% mastery on an October multiple-choice assessment and 17.2% on a December short constructed response. It also documented a revised goal focused on written assessment using a four-point proficiency scale. Team presentation, slide 7.
Those percentages describe different tasks at different times. They should not be read as a decline in learning. But they raise a useful question for any professional learning community: what changes when students have to produce an answer themselves?
Questions like that rarely arrive in the order of a meeting agenda. This is where CoPilot's Aviator comes in handy. In your own PLC, a teacher can ask, “How is my class performing on sixth-grade reading TEKS 6.5G?” Its conversational interface and TEKS-level analysis let teachers follow the question using the assessment data available to Aviator. The aim is to keep limited PLC time focused on the discussion, without setting the question aside until someone runs another report or pausing the meeting to search through reports together. Explore Aviator.
A TEKS code tells a team which expectation it is discussing. Understanding the result also means examining the passage, the question, the required response, and the scoring criteria. A student might identify a key idea in one setting and struggle to support it in another. The tasks and student work help teachers investigate that possibility.
Cobb's team named specific instructional next steps in its presentation, including annotation, teacher modeling, writing, and small-group work. The proposals connected the standard to choices about what teachers and students would do next. Team presentation, slides 4 and 8.
For a principal or instructional leader, that classroom discussion may also prompt a broader question about grade-level performance. CoPilot's A–F Reports put that wider view within reach. They provide accountability projections from supported assessments, including local benchmarks, with filters for grade levels, departments, and teachers. You can use a filtered report to bring that broader context to your meeting, then return to the actual tasks and student work to investigate a particular standard. A–F Reports.
Frisco ISD announced Cobb's recognition as a Model PLC campus in February 2025. The team's artifacts offer a concrete window into the questions behind that collaborative work. District announcement.
For the next PLC, choose one standard whose results deserve a closer look. Bring two tasks aligned to that standard and a few student responses. Ask what each task required students to demonstrate, then agree on a specific instructional change and the evidence the team will examine afterward.
This Data Journeys article draws on publicly available school materials. CoPilot commentary reflects our own perspective and does not describe Cobb's use or endorsement of our products.