The Journey to Create a Data Driven School Culture

Collaborative inquiry posters showing causal analysis based on San Mateo Elementary School data

The Data-Aware Principal: Reflection #1
Guest Blogger: Lindsay P. Sharp, Principal, San Mateo Elementary School, Duval County Public Schools, Jacksonville, FL

As a principal, it’s clear to me that I need to be data informed. My job depends on it—literally, since I am evaluated by my school’s achievement. More importantly, though, my heart depends on it—I am committed to seeing data not as just numbers, but connected to the success of the students and teachers in my school.

As the school’s leader, my thoughts turn to the best way to translate my own state of “data informed-ness” into meaningful action, and I have come to understand the key lies in putting my efforts into creating data leaders beyond the principal’s office. My Using Data colleagues are now in every classroom in my school! Accomplishing this level of a “using data school culture” depends on a process that involves professional development, support, and dedication over time. We work at it every day.

 

Is Every Teacher a Literacy Teacher?: Reading and Writing in the Content Areas

Guest Blogger: Dr. William L. Heller, Using Data Program Director, Teaching Matters

There is a growing philosophy that every teacher is a literacy teacher, a view that is becoming increasingly important as states prepare for the Common Core State Standards, which place an emphasis on content literacy.

But what does “every teacher is a literacy teacher” actually mean? Will science teachers be expected to put away the Bunsen burners and take out the Balzac? Will social studies teachers be responsible for teaching contractions alongside the Constitution? If we misunderstand the idea, we may misapply it, and it may even lead to resentment among teachers who feel they are being asked to take on another’s responsibility.

Part of the confusion may stem from the tendency to refer to the English Language Arts (ELA) class as Literacy class. I’ve done it myself. After all, that is the class where students ultimately learn how to read and write. But as we continue to examine the demands of college and the workplace, we are discovering the need to expand our understanding of literacy as a set of essential skills that are critical for success in every subject area. Teaching literacy in isolation misses the point of why we need to be literate in the first place.

 

March Madness: From Basketball Courts to Classrooms

By Diana Nunnaley, Director, TERC’s Using Data

March Madness annually takes over the country, or at least the media and the minds of U.S. college basketball fans who give it their frenzied attention each spring. At the same time, another March Madness is going on that does not garner the same enthusiasm and  does not make national news in quite the same way. It’s the March Madness going on in schools across the country as teachers and administrators ready for spring, state-initiated student accountability assessments. These tests are considered by some to definitively provide feedback on how much students have learned this year, and correspondingly – how effective their teachers are. (That second-tier “madness” could fill volumes, and I chose to let the pundits continue to hash out that one.)

 

Using Data Tip #6: Beginning a Causal Analysis Process: Why Asking “Why” Once is Not Enough

GUEST BLOGGER: Mary Anne Mather, Using Data Senior Facilitator & Social Media Liaison on Twitter & FaceBook

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” Albert Einstein

Once a school or grade-level data team has analyzed several data sources to pinpoint a student learning problem, they often feel ready to leap into action and solve it. To ensure that the solution pursued produces the hope-for results, it’s essential to engage in a collaborative process of causal analysis to identify the “root” cause of the problem.

There are many tools that support root cause analysis, one of them is referred to as Why-Why-Why—a question-asking technique used to explore cause and effect relationships. Why-Why-Why helps a group look beyond symptoms to underlying causes by taking the identified problem and asking why it exists at least three times—each time probing more deeply.

 

Using Data Tip #5: Getting to the Bottom of “Why” Before Investing in Solutions — Make Inferences and Question Your Data’s Story

GUEST BLOGGER: Mary Anne Mather, Using Data Facilitator & Social Media Liaison on Twitter & FaceBook

“Make data observations. Then generate possible explanations that inform next-steps to finding the best teaching and learning solutions.”
(from: Love, Nancy et al. The Data Coach’s Guide to Improving Learning for All Students, 2008.)

Data analysis is more effective, and more on-target for getting student achievement results, if a team of stakeholders first observe and list as many details as possible about what the data reveal, followed by making inferences about these observations, and then asking “why is this happening?” “what else do we need to know to be sure?”.

Infer/Question is the fourth stage in a team-based, 4-phase dialogue process* that guides deep discussion toward deriving accurate meaning from performance data. (See more information about Step 1: Predict, Step 2: Go Visual, and Step 3: Make Observations.)

These action steps will help you and your data team share inferences about the story the data reveal—inferences that will inform important next-steps toward identifying a valid student learning problem and its true causes.

 

Anatomy of a School Improvement Communications Plan

Guest Blogger: Dr. William L. Heller, Using Data Program Director, Teaching Matters*

Summer has arrived, and the last of our current data institutes, like the school year itself, has come to an end. But as the participating data teams leave, carrying not a diploma but an action plan, they realize that their work is only just beginning. It is not a graduation; it is a commencement. And the first step in the journey ahead is to introduce the action plan they developed to the principal, administrators, teachers, parents, and other stakeholders in their school communities. This requires another planning document—a strategic communications plan, inviting others to invest in a shared vision for bringing the action plan to reality.

So…what are the elements of a good communications plan that will get others behind the action plan?

 

Why Norm? It’s Good Form!

Guest Blogger: Dr. William L. Heller, Using Data Program Director, Teaching Matters*

Data-savvy investigators never make important decisions based on a single source. When teams following the Using Data process believe they may have found a student learning problem, based on their analysis of standardized testing results, they know to confirm the problem through an examination of student work and other common formative assessments. When they do this, it’s important for them to have a norming process in place to ensure that the data being generated is reliable and useful.

Norming is the process of calibrating the use of a single set of scoring criteria among multiple scorers. If norming is successful, a particular piece of work should receive the same score regardless of who is scoring it. With the advent of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, we may anticipate that curriculum-embedded performance tasks will begin to gain prominence over traditional multiple-choice tests, and it will be even more important for teachers to be aware of how to make the best use of these assessments. Whether or not they are rigorous about norming can make a very big difference.

 

Measure What You Treasure: Soccer Goals, Factory Lighting, and Monitoring Plans

GUEST BLOGGER: Dr. William L. Heller, Using Data Program Director, Teaching Matters*

There is an important lesson to be learned from a soccer game played between Barbados and Grenada at the 1994 Shell Caribbean Cup. In this tournament, tied games would go to sudden death overtime, and any subsequent goal scored would be a “Golden Goal” worth two points. Barbados needed to win by two to progress to the next round, and in fact they were ahead 2-0, when Grenada scored.

With just minutes left in the game, a quick-thinking Barbadian player scored on his own goal, tying the game in order to invoke sudden death and buy some time for his team. Grenada’s players then tried to score on their own goal, hoping to lose by one, but Barbados was able to successfully defend Grenada’s goal. The game went into overtime, and Barbados won 4-2.

You would think that it would have taken a great deal to get these players to go against years of training and experience to want to score on their own goals, but all it really took was a momentary change in their accountability system.

We’ve seen a similar effect this year in New York City middle schools.

 

The Portico Problem: In Praise of Item-Level Data Analysis

GUEST BLOGGER: Dr. William L. Heller, Using Data Program Director, Teaching Matters*

As a facilitator of the TERC Using Data institute, I try not to play favorites among the different stages of the process. Every link in the chain is important towards improving student outcomes. But I must confess that I always look forward to the item-level analysis with just a little extra bit of enthusiasm. This is where the school-based data teams that I work with are most likely to achieve a breakthrough and gain new understandings about the problems their students are having. Even the teachers who arrive being the most skeptical about the importance of data are subject to “Aha!” moments when they actually look at the questions their students got wrong on the exams and are able to specifically target a cause and a solution.

 

Building Capacity For Using Data Well: Who should lead the data initiative?

By Diana Nunnaley, Director, TERC’s Using Data

Two thoughtful building administrators wanting to invest in a meaningful and effective initiative for data use in their schools recently came to me and asked. Who is the best person to lead a school’s data initiative?

Both of them, in their initial thinking, wondered if the best approach might be to have a district or building  “data person” present analyzed data findings, student learning problems, and identified solutions to the faculty. While this solution might address budget and scheduling constraints, in my experience it falls short of building and sustaining meaningful data use in a school. I have found that, in many cases, the “data person” is better with formulas and answers than with helping a broader group of stakeholders ask the right questions in order for them to recognize their own place in the CAUSE, as well as their place in the SOLUTION, toward enacting improved student achievement.

So…who IS the best person to lead a school’s data work? The best person is really a data team, led by a designated data coach who assumes the responsibility of organizing data meetings and resources, but who shares responsibility for meeting facilitation, data analysis, verifying causes of student learning problems, and identifying solutions. Together, the team members participate in focused professional development that builds common vision, language, and facility with an iterative process for engaging in data dialog. The REAL question is, “Who should be on the data team?”