Why Data Skills Matter in School Improvement

Without using data to inform their actions at every step of the way, teachers and administrators will probably not reach their goals for school improvement. Ms. Heritage and Ms. Chen describe a CRESST initiative that helps educators develop the skills to collect, analyze, and be guided by data. PICTURE these two scenarios. Toward the end of the school year at Jefferson Elementary, the principal is sharing with his faculty members reports from the district that show the school's aggregated scores on statewide assessments in reading and math. He also has printouts of the school's results on the district's end-of-semester assessments. From these reports, the principal and faculty members can see that reading is a problem for the school's students. They conclude that they have to improve their students' reading skills and so commit to a school improvement goal of focusing on reading in the next school year. They leave for the summer believing that they will do their best next year and hoping that their efforts will result in improved test scores. At the same time, across the district at Adams Elementary, the principal begins a faculty meeting by reviewing the same state and district reports with the school's teachers. The school improvement goal for the past two years has been to increase the percentage of students reaching proficiency on the statewide math test from 55% to 75%, and the principal and the teachers are pleased to see from the students' scores that their efforts have paid off. Now it's time to turn their attention to reading, and the meeting becomes the first step in a new improvement effort. The principal and the teachers make a plan to investigate reading achievement, which includes collecting and analyzing data from multiple assessments, disaggregating scores by subscales and by subgroups, collecting data on a range of indicators and combining these with assessment data to explore factors that may be affecting achievement, and examining longitudinal and cross-sectional data on reading. The investigation will lead these practitioner researchers to establish goals for school improvement and to identify benchmarks to gauge their progress. This process mirrors the one the principal and teachers used to improve math achievement, and they leave for the summer knowing that they have much to do next school year but confident that their efforts will result in improved reading scores. The two schools share the same starting point of examining assessment reports and the same ending point of establishing the goal of improving their students' reading scores. However, the stories of these schools represent two very different approaches to setting the goal and two very different chances of achieving success. What accounts for the differences? A conversation with the principal and teachers at Jefferson Elementary would reveal that they look at assessment data once a year, when the reports come from the state and district, but beyond that they are pretty confused about what to do with all the information available to them. If the principal and teachers at Adams Elementary were asked about data use, they would reply that "using data is a way of life around here -- our investigations of data are continuous and inform the decisions we make about improving student learning. " Simply stated, the educators at Adams Elementary have the necessary skills to use data effectively for school improvement, and they are comfortable with the process, whereas those at Jefferson Elementary don't and aren't. This difference will be a significant factor in the success of their respective school improvement efforts. Much research indicates that making good use of data is a common characteristic of effective schools and districts,1 and the underlying assumption of various accountability mandates, including those in the No Child Left Behind Act, is that using data will lead to school improvement. …