Leadership Matters May 2014 working doc

Student growth: Usingdata tomakedecisions

As we work with school districts on the use of student growth data for teacher evaluation purposes, some interesting revelations are occurring. High school teachers are finding out that students know a whole lot more than the teachers thought they knew. Elementary teachers are discovering that not all students go “brain dead” over the summer months and many maintain and even grow the knowledge from the previous grade.

Dr. RichardVoltz AssociateDirector/

Professional Development

I have written before about the use of data to make decisions. I have learned a lot about the use of data from individuals with MBA type degrees. I remember talking to an alternative certified superintendent (did not travel through the traditional education duties of teacher, building level administrator to superintendent) whowas askingme questions concerningwhat factors I used to analyze the hiring of new teachers. I had to admit that we used a certain cadre of questions, but in the endwe made the hiring decision on non-scientific type responses such as the candidates’ love for children. This administrator related to me an analysis he was doing with teachers in his district. The district had a majority of students from Spanish-speaking families. He had analyzed student growth scores disaggregated by the native language of the teacher. He divided teachers into three groups: 1) NativeEnglish speakers noSpanish skills; 2) Native English speakers with Spanish as a second language; and 3) Native Spanish speakers with English as a second language. His analysis determined that students in classrooms with native Spanish speakers with English as second language outperformed all others. Second were native English speakers with Spanish secondary and last were English only speakers. He told me that they were going to use these results as a screening tool in the interviewprocess for new teachers. While I do not think using student growth for teacher evaluation purposes will be an evolutionary changing experience for public education, I do think using data to think about what we are doing will be important for improving education. In another example of using data to make decisions was an analysis I did concerning high school student performance results on the ACT vs.

the same students’ results on theWorkKeys portion of thePSAE. High school administrators and teachers were concerned that students did not try as hard on the WorkKeys as they did on theACT because theACT counted for college admission and the WorkKeys had no high stakes result. I analyzed the scores using a decile (each of 10 equal groups intowhich a population can be divided according to the distribution of values of a particular variable) analysis and discovered that there was no significant difference in student scores. In other words, if a student scored in the top 10 percent on the ACT they also scored in the top 10 percent of theWorkKeys. A high school district superintendent shared another example to me. In this use of data the district analyzed the math courses that students took in middle school against the grades and level of math the same student earned in high school. It was determined that students who successfully completed Algebra I in the 8 th grade had a 93 percent chance of getting a 24 or better on the ACT test as a high school junior. Conversely, a middle school student who only progressed through 8 th grade remedial math hadonly a 2 percent chanceof scoring a 24 or better on the ACT. Once these statistics were communicated to parents at the elementary level, the feeding elementary districts hadmuch greater success getting students to enroll inmore rigorousmath classes.

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