If You If You Build Build It Will It Will They, They, Necessarily, Necessarily, Come? How To Get Data Used Come? In School Buildings • Jody Ernst • Director of Research & Evaluation • Colorado League of Charter Schools Jody L. Ernst Director of Research & Evaluation CCSSO Annual Conference June 22, 2009

WhatIfare You BuildbyItwhich the steps Will large They, Necessarily, scale assessment data (i.e., raw numbers) Come? get translated into actions effecting the education of students? • Jody Ernst 1.Get all the right systems in place • Director of Research & Evaluation 2.Make it user friendly • Buy-in Colorado 3.Get League from all of Charter Schools stakeholders 4.Develop high quality professional development tools 5.Make these tools available often and inexpensively 6.Provide technical assistance

Even the best data will have no influence on student progress unless TEACHERS are using it to make decisions about instructional practices

-CDE has done 2-4 very well—discuss collaboration—still struggling with number 1 (due to local control of state and FERPA compliance issues) steps are being made thought (e.g., just passed legislation for a statewide teacher identifier)

-Districts and school support organizations need to take
on 4 as well, and will need to provide 5 themselves.

3. Thinking of data broadly (large scale, small scale, ...), how are data quality and data use related.
The best data will do nothing to improve student achievement outcomes if it goes unused
The use of poor data for making decisions about student education could yield potentially negative consequences

CDE with the help of many others, such as the staff at the Center for Assessment, have developed a great, user friendly tool that provides districts and principals now,
And hopefully teachers in the near future, with a visual map of both their overall performance compared to schools in their district, as well as building level exploration
Capabilities.

On the splash page they have introductory tutorials about what the growth model is and how to use the interface.

Here you see a fictitious district

I have selected to look at all elementary schools’ math placement, according to status and growth, and have asked that charters be highlighted.

To dig deeper into my own school, if I were a principle, I select my school too view on of several dissagregations—including grade, ethnicity, and gender.

Here I have selected to view all the 5th graders in my building. From here I can
Identify patterns (which I will show in a minute)
Look at individual student growth patterns over time

Let’s look at a student first.

Bethanne, scored on the cusp of the partially proficient and unsatisfactory categories in 3rd grade. But dropped in to unsat by 4th.

From here we want to know two things: how much growth did Bethanne achieve and how much did she need to move up (rather than down)?

Here we see that her growth was low between 3rd and 4th grade and between 4th and 5th.

Had she grown in the typical range (growth of 35 to 64th percentile) she would have been pp.

Now we need to ask: how much growth does she need to move up next year?

We see here that she need to grow in the high growth range (65th-99th percentile) in order to move up to proficiency.

Since she has historically grown in the low growth range, what needs to be done?

Now what about other subjects?

She is doing better in reading, but has slipped in the last year.

You can see that this info can be used to put this student on an RtI plan.

Because the interface is so visual data teams, or all 6th grade teachers (in this example) and relatively quickly go through individual students
At the beginning of each year—using this info to assign students to classrooms or programs, cluster kids by strengths and needs, etc

Now lets look at pattern identification

Here we are looking at path performance (by scale score and growth) of all 10th grade students in High school 8.

How did we do with our GT kids?

How did we do with our lower income kids?

This is a great result.

If patterns did emerge, it would be a warning sign to make systematic changes to address why a certain group of children are not growing.

If and Districts Youschool Build It Will support They,need organizations Necessarily, to take on the role of providing PD often and inexpensively, and Come? need to provide ongoing technical assistance. • of CDE’s training models for a variety of training formats Jody Ernst -Use • Director (onsite, ofwebinar, regional, Research & Evaluation self-paced) -•Have Colorado League staff on hand of Charter to answer Schools questions and provide hands- on assistance

Just as having great data does not ensure teachers will use it, neither does having a great tool.

PD needs to be made available, time needs to be given to teachers to take advantage of the PD opportunities and PD needs to be made available often, in a variety of formats.

All organizations, states, districts, schools, and school support orgs should be involved in this process—collaboration and buy-in are essential.

All district face challenges around capacity, they need to seek out creative solutions.

If You How/where do Build local dataIt(e.g., Will They, interim Necessarily, assessments, classroom observations) fit in? Come? 1. They inform the teacher about a students progress during the course of the • Jody Ernst academic year, when there is still time for intervention. 2.•They can Director be usedofin conjunction Researchwith&the year Evaluation end measures to assess the effectiveness of the teacher’s/school’s curriculum/practices with last years • Colorado League of Charter Schools students. Teachers need to be trained on how to do this well.

2. With regard to your answer to question 1: How/where do local data (e.g., interim assessments, classroom observations) fit in?
In this model, the data is the result at the end of the year, which teachers do not see until the beginning of the next year.
Interim assessment and classroom observations, therefore, have two uses
1st they inform the teacher about a students progress during the course of the academic year, when there is still time for intervention.
2nd they can be used in conjunction with the year end measures to assess the effectiveness of the teacher’s/school’s curriculum/practices with last years students
in order to make corrections, adjustments to plans for this years students (based on their formative and summative data)

The League is developing our trainings to help schools do this well and I know Rebecca, in Arizona, has already done to do work around this…

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CCSSO If You Buildit — CCSSO, June 2009.

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