Work sample · 9th grade academic health · 48 high schools

Driving Change through Personalized Data Reports

This is the ninth-grade on-track work I owned at KIPP and the weekly artifacts it produced: tens of thousands of rows a week, cut into pages a person could read in two minutes, and all of it ran in a real school, week after week.

Christopher Habetler · Senior Director, High School Advancement, KIPP Foundation, 2024 to 2026
chris@habetlerconsulting.com · chrishabetler.com · Download the 8-page PDF

The one thing

Transparency and timeliness. Take the number that already exists and put it in the hands of the person who can act on it. In a form they can use, while the quarter is still open.

Every proposal that year got measured against that sentence. To get built, it had to put the data into somebody’s hands sooner.

Before

One export per school per week. Tens of thousands of rows across a dozen files, and no version of it a person could read. Cutting it by hand would have run six to eight hours a week, so nobody did it, and people saw it at report cards.

After

The same rows, cut five ways and delivered to people who each own a different decision. A memo for the region, a scripted agenda for the team, a tracker for the adult owner, a page for each teacher, a page for each student. Built with Claude Code, in hand every Tuesday.

How we got there

Year one

Define excellence

Named what good looks like in a ninth grade and wrote the manual. Six metrics, an intervention guide, a shared vocabulary.

Year two

Build the tools

Made the resources schools could opt into. Trackers, protocols, reteach and reassessment. Adoption was voluntary and uneven.

Year three

All in on the one thing

Stopped adding. Spent the year making the same data visible and current, and let the reports pull people into the tools we had already built.

The exhibits, in the order they come up in a week

The report did the persuading. A coach, a teacher and a student could each act on it, and those moves showed up in the next week’s data.

Weekly regional update memo
To the five regional leaders. What moved, what didn’t, and what I’m worried about.
Quarterly strategy memo
The reporting changes the plan, in writing, with the arithmetic attached.
Cusp student tracker
Nineteen named students, one adult owner each, status recalculated weekly.
Team meeting agenda and facilitator script
Forty-five minutes, scripted, so it runs the same with a substitute facilitator.
Teacher digest
One page per teacher. Fidelity gap, weak assignments, her own cusp students.
Student report
Written in second person, to the fifteen-year-old, ending in moves.
Handoff bundle
Eight folders, transferred before my last day. She runs it now.

1 → 5

one export, cut into five documents: region, team, adult owner, teacher, student. six to eight hours a week by hand

Academic Health · Christopher Habetler1

Exhibit 1 · Network and regional level

Weekly Regional Update Memo

Audience: regional leadershipCadence: weeklyAuthor: meStudent names: synthetic

The week starts here. Sent to the five regional leaders. Five metrics, five marking periods, and a plain reading of what’s moving and what isn’t. Student names are replaced.

9th Grade Academic Health: Regional Update

To: Regional leadership team | From: Christopher Habetler | Date: April 28 (Q4 W3) | Re: Team progress and handoff

Where We Are Versus Last Week

Metric	Last week (4/21)	This week (4/28)	Change
1. Teachers with zero ungraded assignments (goal 80%)	11 of 31 (35.5%)	14 of 32 (43.8%)	+3 teachers
2. Total missing assignments	1,631	3,214	+1,583, visibility cost
3. Overall failure rate (failing 1+)	141 of 205 (68.8%)	141 of 205 (68.8%)	flat headcount
4. Teachers meeting gradebook fidelity	4 of 28 (14.3%)	17 of 32 (53.1%)	+13 teachers
5. 9th graders at 3.0+ GPA (target 36%)	42 (20.5%)	55 (26.8%)	+13 students
Total ungraded assignments	90 of 367 (24.5%)	60 of 570 (10.5%)	down 33%

Fidelity. Thirteen more teachers met all three category targets in one week. Thursday’s PD did real work. The open question is whether teachers keep meeting the targets once the dedicated PD time is gone.

Failure rate. Same 141 students, and that’s the one I’m watching. Underneath it, total F grades grew from 338 to 349, and students carrying five or more Fs doubled, 11 to 22. The middle of the cohort is moving up and the bottom is moving down.

Missing assignments. Teachers entered 203 more assignments this week, and that exposed 1,583 pieces of work students had never turned in. That work was always missing. It just wasn’t visible. Friday’s deadline tests whether students close it.

In Context: Five Marking Periods

Metric	Q1 Final	Q2 Final	S1 Final	Q3 Final	Q4 W2	Q4 W3
Average GPA	2.37	2.22	2.31	2.25	1.95	2.09
Failing 1+ class	38.9%	45.1%	35.4%	38.5%	68.8%	68.8%
At 3.0+ GPA	32.5%	25.7%	30.6%	27.8%	20.5%	26.8%
Students with 5+ Fs	6	17	12	17	11	22

Q4 is in progress. It reads worse than the Q1 through Q3 finals because grading is incomplete and missing work is being entered in real time. Read it as a leading indicator.

The 19 Cusp Students, Tracked by Name

Cohort locked on year-to-date GPA. Three adult owners, six or seven students each.

Push group (YTD 2.84 to 2.95)	YTD	Q3	Q4 W2	Q4 W3	Fs
Student A	2.95	2.79	2.55	2.74	1
Student B	2.91	2.46	2.26	2.87	0
Student C	2.91	2.74	3.07	3.06	0
Student D	2.88	2.87	1.47	1.44	2
four further rows in the push group

Fragile group (YTD 3.00 to 3.18, must stay above 3.0)	YTD	Q3	Q4 W2	Q4 W3	Fs
Student L	3.18	3.13	2.39	3.26	1
Student M	3.13	3.05	2.50	3.00	0
Student N	3.04	3.03	2.00	1.54	3
eight further rows in the fragile group

Student N is the one I want an adult on this week. Above a 3.0 all year, three Fs in two weeks. The weekly report puts that in front of somebody in April.

Academic Health · Christopher Habetler2

Exhibit 2 · Where the reporting led

Quarterly Strategy Memo to Regional Leadership

Audience: regional leadershipCadence: once a quarterPurpose: change the plan, in writing

Once a quarter the same reporting has to change the plan. Written at the Q2 close, it names the wins, names what I got wrong, and narrows Q3 to a single cohort with the arithmetic attached. Teacher and student names replaced.

9th Grade Academic Health: Q2 Final Review and Q3 Strategy

To: Regional leadership team | From: Christopher Habetler | Date: February 5

Semester 1 Progress

Metric	Q1	Q2	S1 avg	Change Q1 to Q2
% at 3.0+ GPA	33%	27%	30%	down 6 pts
# at 3.0+	68	55	–	13 students lost
% with 1+ F	61%	46%	–	down 15 pts
Overall failure rate	–	14.9%	–	–

What Worked

Failure rate dropped hard. The interventions are doing what we said they would.
The cusp cohort is in good shape. Thirteen of our fifteen target students carry zero Fs. These are passing students who need small improvements, not failure recovery.
The systems are running. Weekly data cadence, teacher handouts, cusp tracking and the 9th grade team meeting work without me in the building.
Teachers moved. Some who were above a 20% failure rate in Q1 are now under it.

What Did Not Work

We lost ground Q1 to Q2. Six points off the 3.0+ measure, thirteen students who were above the line in Q1 and are not now. That is the number I am accountable for.
High-failure teachers are still high. One section is at a 41% failure rate carrying 46 Fs. Coaching there has not worked yet and needs a different approach.
We went too broad. We ran three priorities at once and finished none of them. Q3 needs a narrower target.

Q3 Strategy: Narrow to the Cusp Cohort

The Big Three stays as the foundation. Priority one gets the attention.

#	Priority	Q3 status
1	Move cusp students above 3.0	Primary focus
2	Align gradebooks with policy (the 4 Rs)	Ongoing teacher support
3	Reduce course failures	Monitoring and intervention

The arithmetic. Fifteen named students are between a 2.5 and a 2.99. We are at 55 students above 3.0. Move all fifteen and we are at 70, or 34 percent, which is the Q3 target. That is the whole plan. Fifteen students, three adult owners, five students each.

Next Steps

Feb 5, Q3 launch meeting. Assign an adult owner to each cusp student and plan the outreach while everyone is together.
Weekly. Pull the data, track cusp progress, adjust interventions.
Teacher support. Continue check-ins with the 41% section and the other high-failure teachers.

Please let me know if you have questions or want to talk through any part of this.

Academic Health · Christopher Habetler3

Exhibit 3 · The cohort itself

Cusp Student Tracker

Audience: the adult ownerCadence: recalculated weeklyRows: 19 named studentsNames: synthetic

Once the data was current, the same pattern showed up everywhere: Most students under a 3.0 were passing every course. They were between a 2.5 and a 2.99, a few assignments short, and no report ever flagged them. So we named them, locked the cohort, and gave every one of them an adult.

9th Grade Academic Health: Q4 W2 Target Students

19 students tracked | three adult owners, six or seven students each | cohort locked on year-to-date GPA | April 22

Push Group (YTD 2.84 to 2.95): Below 3.0, Close Enough to Cross

Student	Q1	Q2	Q3	YTD	Q4 W2	Chg	Fs	Classes failing	Miss	Status	Adult
Student A	3.13	2.92	2.79	2.95	2.55	−0.40	2	English I, Theater I	6	CRITICAL	Cruz
Student B	3.13	3.13	2.46	2.91	2.26	−0.65	1	Algebra I	7	OFF TRACK	Cruz
Student C	3.03	2.95	2.74	2.91	3.07	+0.16	0	None	3	CROSSED	Cruz
Student D	2.67	3.10	2.87	2.88	1.47	−1.41	3	English I, PE, Physics	6	CRITICAL	Cruz
Student E	2.59	2.87	3.16	2.87	3.10	+0.23	0	None	5	CROSSED	Cruz
Student F	2.76	2.91	2.94	2.87	2.70	−0.17	1	Physics	5	OFF TRACK	Cruz
Student G	2.82	2.74	2.98	2.85	2.31	−0.54	2	Algebra I, World History	7	CRITICAL	Cruz
Student H	2.77	2.85	2.90	2.84	3.92	+1.08	0	None	7	CROSSED	Cruz
Push summary: 3 crossed · 2 off track · 3 critical. Eleven more rows follow in the fragile group, students already above 3.0 who have to stay above it.

How Status Gets Set

Status	Rule	What the adult owner does this week
CROSSED	Q4 GPA at or above 3.0, zero Fs	Confirm and protect. One check-in, no new plan.
OFF TRACK	Below 3.0, one F or fewer	Name the specific assignments and get them on Friday’s redo list.
CRITICAL	Two or more Fs, or a drop over half a point	Same-week conversation, family call, and a redo plan by course.

Student D is why the cohort gets recalculated every week. Above a 2.85 year to date, three Fs and a 1.41-point drop inside two weeks. Every week means an adult sees that in April.

Academic Health · Christopher Habetler4

The week around this meeting

Tue

Data drop; the week’s deliverables generate

Wed

45-minute team meeting from the scripted agenda

Thu

Adult owners build redo lists

Fri

Redos to students, end-of-day deadline

Mon

Lunch study hall; work gets finished

Exhibit 4 · School and coach level

Weekly Team Meeting Agenda with Facilitator Script

Audience: the 9th grade teamCadence: Wednesday, 45 minutesBuilt to: run without me

Every red line is scripted, so the meeting runs the same with a substitute facilitator. Commitments get checked by name before anybody looks at new data. Names synthetic.

9th Grade Team

9th Grade Academic Health, S2.3 Check-In | February 25 | S2 Student Tracker and AH Hub

Commitment Check-in (5 Min)

"Let’s walk through commitments. I’m going to go one by one. Just tell me: done, not done, or in progress."

"Alana, goal-setting conversations with your six cusp students. How many did you get to? Which students?"

"On my end, I got the data snapshots out, teacher reports are done, and the practice AM meeting happened. Here’s what I learned from it."

Commitment	Owner	Due	Impact / barrier
Goal-setting conversations with 6 cusp students	Alana	3/4	Informal, few done
Goal-setting conversations with 6 cusp students	Bea	3/4
Goal-setting conversations with 6 cusp students	Corine	3/4
Family launch calls for cusp students	Alana	2/26
Cusp student data snapshots sent	Chris	–
Teacher reports updated with cusp flags	Chris	–

Data and Headlines (5 Min)

"Alright, let’s look at the numbers. Take a second to read the table. What jumps out at you?"

(Pause. Wait for the team to respond, at least 10 seconds.)

Metric	Wk 2	Wk 3	Change	Target
9th graders at 3.0+ GPA	20.5%	26.8%	+6.3 pp	36%
Teachers meeting gradebook fidelity	14%	53%	+39 pp	80%
Total ungraded assignments	612	388	down 224	Falling

Naming the Win (3 Min)

"Before we go to problems. Ms. Okafor’s failure rate dropped 13 points this week. She added five summatives from zero. That’s the biggest single-week move in the building, and I want everyone to hear the mechanism, not just the number."

Routing the Week (15 Min)

If the data looks like this	The move is
Under 15% failing, strugglers scattered	Cusp work: tutorial system, student trackers, mentor pairing
Over 15% failing, half from one or two sections	Teacher and course work: gradebook scrub, reteach and reassess
Over 15% failing, spread across the grade	Gradewide work: data review protocol, advisory check-ins

Run the equity check before the routing call. Disaggregate first, and consult student support services where gen-ed and IEP gaps are different.

Academic Health · Christopher Habetler5

Exhibit 5 · Teacher level

Biweekly Teacher Digest

Audience: one teacherCadence: every other weekGenerated: automatically, Tuesday

The same data, cut for the person who assigns the grade. One page per teacher, handed over in the Wednesday meeting. It’s specific to her, and it never ranks teachers against each other. Two teachers in the same course with different fidelity gaps give me a coaching plan. Names synthetic.

Academic Health Teacher Digest

9th Grade | Week of March 5 | Rivera, A. | Teaches Grades: 9

Targets

Metric	Target	Current (Gr 9)
% with GPA 3.0+	32%	18%
% with 1+ Fs	under 15%	70%

Course Failure Rates

Course	Gr	Failure rate	Failing / total
English I	9	35.2%	19 / 54
English I Honors	9	8.3%	2 / 24

Gradebook Fidelity

Grading frequency targets are set by school grading policy.

Course	Category	Have	Target	Gap
English I	Formative Assessment	2	3	−1
English I	Summative Assessment	1	1	0
English I	Class Performance	3	2	+1
English I Honors	Formative Assessment	3	3	0
English I Honors	Summative Assessment	1	1	0
English I Honors	Class Performance	2	2	0

Assignments Below 70% Average

Class average is below 70%. Consider reteaching or offering retakes.

Assignment	Course	Avg score
U3.L5 Reading Comprehension Check	English I	52%
U3.L7 Vocabulary Quiz	English I	61%
U4.L1 Essay Draft	English I	45%

Assignments with a High Number of "Not Turned In"

Assignment	Course	# not in
U4.L1 Essay Draft	English I	15
U3.L5 Reading Comprehension Check	English I	8

Cusp Students

Students with a GPA between 2.50 and 2.99 who are close to 3.0. Help them get there.

Student	Gr	GPA	Missing	High impact assignments
Alvarez, D.	9	2.78	U4.L1 Essay Draft; U3.L7 Vocabulary Quiz	U3.L5 Reading Check (42% vs 68% avg)
Whitfield, M.	9	2.91	–	U3.L5 Reading Check (48% vs 68% avg); U4.L1 Essay Draft (55% vs 72% avg)
Osei, T.	9	2.52	U3.L5 Reading Check; U4.L1 Essay Draft; U3.L7 Vocab Quiz	–

Q3 ends: March 27

Academic Health · Christopher Habetler6

Exhibit 6 · Student level

Student Report, Written to the Student

Audience: the studentCadence: weekly during the pushHanded over by: her adult owner

And cut once more, for the person whose grade it is. One per student in the cusp band. Second person, plain language, and it ends in moves. A fifteen-year-old can read it and do something with it that afternoon. Names and figures below are synthetic.

Alvarez, Daniela R.

Semester 2, Week 3 Academic Update | March 5 | Advisor: Ms. Rivera

Needs attention: English I

Your Snapshot

S1 GPA	Week 2 GPA	Week 3 GPA	Change, W2 to W3	S2 target	Gap to target
2.95	1.00	1.93	+0.93	3.05	1.12

Your Grades Right Now

Course	Q3 grade
Algebra I	D
English I	F
Math Intensive (0.5 credit)	P
Physical Education I	P
Physics	B−
Spanish II	A+
World History and Geography I	C−

Where You Stand

Your GPA dropped from 2.95 to 1.93. That is a 1.02-point drop, and closing it means consistent effort every day from here to the end of Q3. Good news: you are up 0.93 since last week.
You are not passing English I. That one F is pulling your GPA down.
You have 23 missing assignments, 29% of your total. Turning those in is the fastest path to raising your grade.
You need a 3.05 to hit your S2 target. You are at 1.93, so the gap is 1.12.

Your Next Moves

Turn in your 23 missing assignments. Start with the four in English I.
Talk to your English I teacher this week about retakes, corrections, or extra support.
Check in with Ms. Rivera. Every assignment counts from here.

Assignments to Complete: 23 of 80 Graded

These are assignments other students have been graded on, but you do not have a score yet.

Assignment	Course	Category
U2.L14 Exit Ticket	English I	Class Performance
U2.L14 Homework	English I	Class Performance
Unit 2 End-of-Unit Exam	English I	Summative Assessment
U2 Performance Task	English I	Summative Assessment
Diagnostic #25	Math Intensive	Class Performance
Participation and Behavior, week of 2/24	Physical Education I	Class Performance
Conversation Practice	Spanish II	Class Performance
Past Tense (Regular AR, ER, IR Verbs)	Spanish II	Class Performance
fifteen further rows in the shipped version

Academic Health · Christopher Habetler7

Exhibit 7 · After me

The Handoff

It had to keep running after I left. Before my last day I packaged the system and handed it to a colleague. She runs it now.

What was transferred	Contents
01 Operating instructions	The weekly workflow, the meeting sequence, the escalation rules, written for someone who wasn’t in the room when it was designed
02 Operating procedures	Formatting specifications and generation procedures for each deliverable, so output is identical whoever runs it
03 Build scripts	The generation pipeline, with every rule in a configuration layer she can change without calling me
04 Master tracker	The live student and teacher tracker, cusp cohort flagged
05 Recent week examples	A full run of the most recent week’s outputs, so she could see finished work before producing any
06 Templates	Blank and partially built versions of each weekly deliverable
07 Gold-standard exemplars	One annotated model of every artifact in this portfolio
08 Historical data	Q1, Q2, S1 and Q3 by school, for pattern comparison across the year

One piece is public. The routing logic is a free coaching app any school leader can use. The Academic Health Coach, at ch-ah-coach.netlify.app. It asks a leader for the week’s numbers and takes them through the same choices the intervention guide does. Built on Claude, like the reporting pipeline.

I wrote it for one school. We were then able to play it across the network.

All exhibits de-identified. The production pipeline anonymizes and decouples student records before analysis runs. These pages were rebuilt with synthetic names, against the same formatting specs the live deliverables use.

Academic Health · Christopher Habetler · Download the 8-page PDF8