A Data Room in the Making

Next week, my principal and I are going to see a middle school's data room.  This is part of our plan to set up our own data room, for which we have made great head-way.  Even though our district provides opportunities for teachers to look at data, the group who feels ownership of that data is very small.  Currently, through the county's Continuous School Improvement (CSI) plan, a group of teachers meets during the summer to look at data and to develop goals for the school based on student performance on standardized assessments.  When those goals are set, I create a "cheat sheet" for the teachers that I call "CIP [Continuous Improvement Plan] At a Glance."  This at least gives the rest of the faculty a chance to see what the goals are and to align their instruction with those goals.  While this process creates awareness for our teachers, it doesn't create ownership because the majority of the faculty has had little to no involvement in looking at the data or setting the goals.

Our data room will change that focus.  We are going to put every single student's data up for all teachers to see.  Every time teachers give a benchmark test, they will add that data to the student's data profile.  This should allow us to easily look at student progress or lack thereof.  

The important thing to remember is the reason for looking at data.  It's not to shake our fingers at those who aren't doing well.  It's to know immediately who's not doing well, to look at why they're not doing well, and to redirect instruction before it's too late.  Additionally, we must understand that the role of the teachers is to question each other.  In other words, if they notice a trend that everyone in Ms. Smith's room is doing well on fractions, they need to see what techniques Ms. Smith is using to ensure student success and to take those "best practices" back to their own classrooms.  This is the true purpose of data-driven instruction.  It's to see who's doing what well and to improve our own practice by learning from our colleagues.

In this video, educators from one school district talk about how they became more data driven and what it's done for their school system.