As a music specialist, I have never really been asked to study the state test scores and other student achievement data for my school. Once a year, at the pre-planning faculty meeting scores are presented to the faculty as a whole. If those scores are not related to your subject area, you usually don’t hear about them again, except, maybe, in the School Improvement Plan. Having said that, I learned many valuable things about data during this course. The first of these is that there are appropriate (high-capacity) and inappropriate (low-capacity) uses of data that can either help or harm learners and/or their teachers. The second is that there are many different types of data. Before this course I was not familiar with the differences between aggregated and disaggregated data, short-term, medium-term, and long-term data, etc. I was familiar with the difference between formative and summative assessments, but not the many ways they could be used to drill-down to find the student-learning problem that needs to be addressed. So, thirdly, I learned how to look at multiple data sources to find the student-learning problem and set goals to address that problem and improve teaching and learning.
The most valuable field experience in this course was creating the Data Overview. Prior to this assignment I was not familiar with how to find schools’ state test scores or how to make sense of all the data I was looking at. Through creating the Data Overview (and completing Tasks 1-5 before it), I learned to interpret the data and create graphics to “Go Visual” and explain that data to others. This will be a valuable skill that I can use in my own teaching as well as when working with other teachers to find the student-learning problem that needs to be addressed. I plan to use this skill as well as much of the information I have learned in this course to help other teachers in my school better understand how to use the data they have to improve instruction and student learning.
I think one of the major challenges I will encounter is that, like me, there are many teachers who have not been exposed to data with the exception of a once-a-year glance at the state test scores. These teachers may not be aware of the many different types of data they have at their disposal that can be used to improve their instruction and their students’ learning. It will be my job to facilitate data-driven dialogue that will help them look at this data and find the roots of the student-learning problem that needs to be addressed.
The most valuable field experience in this course was creating the Data Overview. Prior to this assignment I was not familiar with how to find schools’ state test scores or how to make sense of all the data I was looking at. Through creating the Data Overview (and completing Tasks 1-5 before it), I learned to interpret the data and create graphics to “Go Visual” and explain that data to others. This will be a valuable skill that I can use in my own teaching as well as when working with other teachers to find the student-learning problem that needs to be addressed. I plan to use this skill as well as much of the information I have learned in this course to help other teachers in my school better understand how to use the data they have to improve instruction and student learning.
I think one of the major challenges I will encounter is that, like me, there are many teachers who have not been exposed to data with the exception of a once-a-year glance at the state test scores. These teachers may not be aware of the many different types of data they have at their disposal that can be used to improve their instruction and their students’ learning. It will be my job to facilitate data-driven dialogue that will help them look at this data and find the roots of the student-learning problem that needs to be addressed.