Gheens specialists also encourage faculties to have regular and ongoing conversations about the effectiveness of their chosen strategies. We have a lot of work to do in relation to helping teachers reach agreement about what is good work on the part of students and what is their role in helping them get there. But if they didn't get it, I need to teach it again and in different ways. Data can be a crutch, or part of the cure The regular analysis of student achievement data is a critical step in understanding how to break through the barriers of low achievement and low expectations. But like any tool, data must be put to good use to be effective.
Data can be a crutch or part of the cure.
It can be used to justify poor results, or to challenge status-quo teaching and spur innovation. Other schools use the test results to help them improve instruction for all the students who show up in their classrooms. That information helps the principal identify the most effective instructional strategies and encourage other teachers to adopt them. By contrast, he said, another local elementary school asks for data comparing its scores to the test scores of students who live in the school's attendance zone but chose to attend magnet schools. That information might confirm that the neighborhood school has lost some high-achieving students, Draut said, but it won't show educators how well they've helped the students who stayed behind.