The 5 Elements of Data Integration

Oftentimes the way teachers gauge student success is through a method that has been termed the "cardiac approach:"

I feel like my students really understand concept x, y, or z.

So what brought about the change from the "cardiac approach" to a more data-driven approach?  Though in many ways, the responsible change agent is a four-letter word, it can be attributed with having teachers look more closely at data.  You guessed it:  the re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, better known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB).


Consider this quote from an article published in Educational Leadership:

The marriage between the data-driven movement and No Child Left Behind instigated many positive actions, especially on behalf of low-performing subgroups. As Tom Peters (1987) wrote two decades ago, "What gets measured gets done." 

You will find a link to the full article below.

But how do we help teachers make a healthy and, hopefully, painless transition from the cardiac approach to a data-driven approach?  In Larry Berger's article "4 Ways to Build Data-Driven Classrooms," he gives us some helpful suggestions for making the process easier for teachers.  He suggests, in short, that we must 1) build a culture that is data-driven, 2) keep the data simple, 3) make sure the data is in a usable form for teachers, so they have time to use it and don't spend all their time simply culling it, and 4) that we set short-term goals, so that teachers see more immediate results between data and performance.  Here is a link to the full article:

4 Ways to Build Data-Driven Instruction

I can honestly say that I didn't do much with data until I became a high school reading specialist.  When I took that position, I believed it was essential to monitor the reading growth of the students I served.  Because they were already behind academically, we did not have time to waste on what didn't work.  I would like to think that some of our success was because I followed the steps that Berger mentions in his article.  I worked very hard with the other reading teachers and with the faculty as a whole to build a data-driven culture--at least in the area of reading.  I made a simple Excel spreadsheet on which I tracked all student progress data, so teachers could see, at a glance, what was happening.  Each student had a nine-weeks goal, so we could see progress.  If we did not see progress, we changed direction with that student.  I also ran one test program alongside our primary program to see if we could find anything that out-performed what we were already doing.  (As an aside, nothing ever outperformed our primary program.)

I think my work as a reading specialist gave me a jump start in looking at and being guided by data.  This makes me think there may be a fifth element that Berger left out of his article--passion.  When we are passionate about what we do, it makes all the difference in how we approach it.


Educational Leadership article