Why your best scorer can be all red
The misconception bar answers a different question from the score. The score says how many questions a student got right. The bar says how much of what the diagnostic found is still unresolved. A student can be strong on both counts, weak on both, or, as below, look contradictory.
Two real looking students
Two wrong answers, so two misconceptions flagged. Neither has been drilled, so both are active and red fills the whole bar. The bar is two problems drawn at full width.
Three wrong answers, so three flagged. This student went and did the drill for all three and cleared them, so green fills the whole bar. More errors originally, none of them open now.
The bar never shows a score
Every segment is a proportion of that student's own flagged misconceptions, so the width of the red tells you what share is open, not how many there are. A single active misconception fills the bar exactly as completely as nine do. When you want the number, open the student's row, and when you want a score, read the Cumulative column.
What actually gets recorded
Here is the part almost nobody guesses. On a diagnostic, only a wrong answer is tied to a misconception at all.
| Where | The answer | What it records |
|---|---|---|
| Diagnostic | Correct | No misconception at all. The right choice carries no code, so nothing is credited to anything. |
| Diagnostic | Wrong | The specific misconception behind that wrong choice, flagged active. |
| Drill | Correct | The only thing that clears. The misconception being drilled, credited as answered correctly. |
| Drill | Wrong | The same misconception, still open. |
So a misconception is never cleared inside the diagnostic. Answering a later question correctly does not retire a flag raised earlier in the same sitting, because the system was never told that answer had anything to do with that misconception. The diagnostic's job is to name the error. Clearing happens afterwards, in the targeted practice.
One misconception, start to finish
Step through what happens to a single misconception, U1-PH02, from the moment it is caught.
Nothing recorded
The student has not met this question yet. There is no row for this misconception, so it takes up no width on their bar at all.
Two correct answers in the drill is what clears it. One is progress, and the bar shows that as yellow rather than pretending the work has not happened.
What to do with it on a Monday
Read the bar as one question: how much of what I found is still open? A student with any red or purple has something specific waiting for them in the drill, whatever they scored. A student who is all green has closed the loop on everything the diagnostic caught, even if their score was ordinary. The pull cards at the top of the dashboard already rank by exactly this, so on most days the bar is confirming a decision the page has made for you.