Data Analysis and School Improvement, it just sounds like a scary course, especially for someone like me who considers herself a novice at these very important tasks in the school community. However, once I received the textbooks and began to dig in, I realized this was no where near as threatening as I had perceived. In fact, it was just the opposite. Creating a data team is not very intimidating, especially when you have books, such as Data Wise and The Data Coach's Guide that walk you step by step through the process. The most important things I learned in this course was how to set-up a data team, distinguish dialogue and discussion, and put a plan in action.
In my local school, we have a unique model. We are a very small school, so this helps us greatly when it comes to vertical planning. However, when we have our monthly content area meetings, we just discuss the Milestone assessment. We never look at student work samples and talk about deficiencies that we are seeing across the board; we never get past casual conversation when it comes to data. This year, I would like to challenge my school to have those tough conversations and begin to push our staff and students to greater heights.
The data team I have conjured in my mind consists of three tiers: the grade-level content area data team, the content area team, and the school leadership team. This model allows each teacher to have a voice at some point during the data process. Although it is complex, it is practical. The grade level content area team meets formally at least once a week. At this meeting, there are three teachers who work closely together. They pin-point weaknesses and strengths they see in assessments and work together to dissolve this issue. At our monthly content area meetings, each grade level will have a representative that gives an overview of what is happening within their team, and all the content area team jumps in to give suggestions and feedback. Finally, there is the leadership team which is headed by the content area coordinator. This team also meets monthly and can express the over-arching themes from the meetings. This way the school can work together at three levels to help one another identify, address, and abolish achievement gaps.
Last year, I found that when my content area team and I would sit down to review recent data, we just ended up discussing and not drawing any conclusions. Now that I know how to get this conversation going, I will bring in the sentence stems to our data team meetings to help us stay on course and find meaning in what our time is spent on. The sentence stems will help us work together without any teacher feeling threatened or attacked.
Finally, the action plan was a very useful assignment. I will admit creating the year long action plan was very tedious and took more time that I would like to admit. However, when a calendar is published like this it promotes clear expectations and accountability. I like that we had creative room to bring our own style to the calendar. In an effort to reduce teacher frustration and time, I made some of the reflection pieces online so the teachers could do this on their own time. The Action Plan Part 2 assignment was the most valuable thing to me because it is something tangible I can show to my principal and continue to modify until it suites our schools needs.
I would like to implement all of this in my school as soon as possible. However, I know realistically it will probably be best for me to pilot this within my content area or grade level before taking the initiative school wide. I believe the school will benefit greatly from this, but I do have several fears about implementing formalized data teams.
I do not want this to be something everyone signs onto for a couple of months, but then abandons as the school year gets under way. I feel like the data model is most beneficial when it is fully embraced, and it takes a team to implement and get real results. Also, I am threatened by the numerous amount of naysayers. Morale among teachers in general is very low right now, and creating data teams is a real time commitment. Are teachers going to see this is one more thing someone is forcing them to do or will they see the value in it?
As I previously stated, the only way for me to gain traction and confidence is for me to pilot this first and then model positive experiences I know I will have once the data model is implemented. Although the journey may be tough, this class has been a great experience for me and I am excited about the knowledge and opportunities I will receive because of the knowledge I have gained about Excel and UDP from this course.
In my local school, we have a unique model. We are a very small school, so this helps us greatly when it comes to vertical planning. However, when we have our monthly content area meetings, we just discuss the Milestone assessment. We never look at student work samples and talk about deficiencies that we are seeing across the board; we never get past casual conversation when it comes to data. This year, I would like to challenge my school to have those tough conversations and begin to push our staff and students to greater heights.
The data team I have conjured in my mind consists of three tiers: the grade-level content area data team, the content area team, and the school leadership team. This model allows each teacher to have a voice at some point during the data process. Although it is complex, it is practical. The grade level content area team meets formally at least once a week. At this meeting, there are three teachers who work closely together. They pin-point weaknesses and strengths they see in assessments and work together to dissolve this issue. At our monthly content area meetings, each grade level will have a representative that gives an overview of what is happening within their team, and all the content area team jumps in to give suggestions and feedback. Finally, there is the leadership team which is headed by the content area coordinator. This team also meets monthly and can express the over-arching themes from the meetings. This way the school can work together at three levels to help one another identify, address, and abolish achievement gaps.
Last year, I found that when my content area team and I would sit down to review recent data, we just ended up discussing and not drawing any conclusions. Now that I know how to get this conversation going, I will bring in the sentence stems to our data team meetings to help us stay on course and find meaning in what our time is spent on. The sentence stems will help us work together without any teacher feeling threatened or attacked.
Finally, the action plan was a very useful assignment. I will admit creating the year long action plan was very tedious and took more time that I would like to admit. However, when a calendar is published like this it promotes clear expectations and accountability. I like that we had creative room to bring our own style to the calendar. In an effort to reduce teacher frustration and time, I made some of the reflection pieces online so the teachers could do this on their own time. The Action Plan Part 2 assignment was the most valuable thing to me because it is something tangible I can show to my principal and continue to modify until it suites our schools needs.
I would like to implement all of this in my school as soon as possible. However, I know realistically it will probably be best for me to pilot this within my content area or grade level before taking the initiative school wide. I believe the school will benefit greatly from this, but I do have several fears about implementing formalized data teams.
I do not want this to be something everyone signs onto for a couple of months, but then abandons as the school year gets under way. I feel like the data model is most beneficial when it is fully embraced, and it takes a team to implement and get real results. Also, I am threatened by the numerous amount of naysayers. Morale among teachers in general is very low right now, and creating data teams is a real time commitment. Are teachers going to see this is one more thing someone is forcing them to do or will they see the value in it?
As I previously stated, the only way for me to gain traction and confidence is for me to pilot this first and then model positive experiences I know I will have once the data model is implemented. Although the journey may be tough, this class has been a great experience for me and I am excited about the knowledge and opportunities I will receive because of the knowledge I have gained about Excel and UDP from this course.