April 2006 — Features
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ISKME Special Series Part 3: Using Data to Improve Instruction
Are you using the right tests? The correct assessment methods? The best technology? These are only a few of the issues that must be addressed in the effort to use data to change teacher practice.
SCHOOLS ACROSS THE COUNTRY are collecting
and disseminating student achievement data as never
before. Local newspapers are displaying test scores
and graduation rates on their front pages. Realtors are
posting this same information on their Web sites to
market the most desirable neighborhoods. And superintendents
are creating public relations campaigns
around school report cards.
But despite the clamor over test results, little is known about how such data is being used by teachers to improve student learning—or about the kinds of technology that would make the data more accessible, and thus more able to inform and improve classroom practice.
When Bad Data Happens to Good Teachers
While there are some who argue that good teachers are born and not made, most would agree that teachers must work to develop the skills and practices, subject-matter expertise, and strategies of pedagogy and discipline needed to become successful. Part of this process involves using self-reflective methods to gain a keen understanding of how one is performing. Like a figure skater who watches a video clip of her spins again and again to improve the timing of her jump, so do teachers need to become more precise in understanding what their students have learned, how they have come to learn it, and where gaps in their learning remain.
Most teachers welcome the opportunity to become more effective educators, and look for ways to improve their own teaching practice. But with the dizzying array of state tests, district assessments, and program-specific rubrics, many are at a loss as to how to begin using data to improve their practice.
Within their own classrooms, virtually all teachers use ongoing assessments—some formal, some informal—to determine which students are learning the material. For example, Lori Janiuk, a first-grade teacher at Hunnewell School in Wellesley, MA, says that using data to change instruction should be daily practice. “We do some large-group instruction to introduce all students to a topic,” Janiuk says. “Then we look at the class: Who understood it? Who needs more time on it? This might be done anecdotally or with paper and pencil during observations. Sometimes it’s a formal assessment piece, or sometimes from more of a gut feeling. We then figure out how to re-teach the students who need to stay where they are and how to move others on.”
A key to using data to improve instruction is the ability to think about how to create an intervention or a change in practice. That means that using data is much more than figuring out how to track students; it’s about using assessments for learning, as opposed to assessments of learning. As a result, the most helpful assessments for teachers are those that can help guide instruction to provide individualized learning.
