The Data Coach's Guide to Improving Learning for All Students. Katherine E. Stiles
Finally, it is for all teachers, who can use the process and tools themselves and provide leadership in their buildings to enhance results for students.
Assumptions
The Using Data Process places a major emphasis on surfacing and engaging in dialogue about assumptions. Therefore, an introduction to this book would not be complete without a discussion of the assumptions the authors held as we developed the entire Using Data Process. Please use these as a catalyst to clarify your thinking as well as for dialogue with your Data Teams.
Assumption 1:
Making significant progress in improving student learning and closing achievement gaps is a moral responsibility and a real possibility in a relatively short amount of time—two to five years. It is not children’s poverty or race or ethnic background that stands in the way of achievement; it is school practices and policies and the beliefs that underlie them that pose the biggest obstacles.
Federal and state policies will come and go. But one moral imperative is abiding. As Michael Fullan (1993) reminds us, “You can’t mandate what matters” (p. 21). And what matters is educators’ deep responsibility for the learning of every child. This assumption implies a shift from a compliance mentality—a sense of external accountability, something someone is making us do—to a sense of internal and collective responsibility. It also reflects the authors’ belief that it is impossible to use data as a lever for change without talking about race, class, and culture and our beliefs about the capabilities of children. It is the silence about these issues that has kept us from confronting problems and taking action.
The potential to dramatically improve the learning of traditionally underserved students has been demonstrated time and again. The Using Data Project schools serving African American, Latino/a, Native American, and poor students significantly improved student achievement within three years (Zuman, 2006). The Education Trust database Dispelling the Myth contains the data on thousands of schools that are serving students living in poverty and from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, yet are achieving at high levels (Education Trust, 2003). Glenn Singleton and Curtis Linton (2006), in their book Courageous Conversations About Race, report on the Del Roble Elementary School in Oak Grove, California, which dramatically accelerated the progress toward mastery of standards of African American and Latino/a students in a year’s time by “acknowledging that racial biases existed in their own work and that these biases made it difficult for some student of color groups to succeed” and then taking corrective action (p. 36).
Improvement strategies such as aligning curriculum to rigorous standards, frequently monitoring student progress, organizing schools to engage in short cycles of collaborative inquiry, providing professional development linked to student goals, and offering immediate extra help for students who need it—many of which can happen quickly—were implemented in the Using Data field-test sites and paid off with increased student-learning gains.
To examine one’s assumptions and beliefs about educating children—in particular, given the history of our country, African American children—is crucial to becoming a successful teacher of Black children.
—CampbellJones and CampbellJones, 2002, p. 136
Assumption 2:
Data have no meaning. Meaning is imposed through interpretation. Frames of reference, the way we see the world, influence the meaning we derive from data. Effective data users become aware of and critically examine their frames of reference and assumptions (Wellman & Lipton, 2004, pp. ix–xi). Conversely, data themselves can also be a catalyst to questioning assumptions and changing practices based on new ways of thinking.
This assumption is closely related to the first and is why we place so much emphasis on surfacing assumptions, particularly assumptions about children and their capabilities and beliefs about teaching and learning. If one holds the view that whether students learn is the student’s responsibility and not that of the teacher, one might then look at a student’s poor performance on assessments and conclude that it is entirely the student’s fault. There is nothing to be done to improve teaching. If one believes that African American students are not as capable as White students, then data that reveal an achievement gap between these groups does nothing but confirm that belief. The reaction is complacency or resignation. Beliefs about teaching also profoundly influence data interpretation. For example, one teacher believes that students learn best when they are actively constructing their own meaning. Another believes that skill building and practice and teacher talk are how students learn. When examining student work that reveals a student’s confusion, these two teachers will react very differently.
On the other hand, when one is open to critically examining assumptions, data can be a catalyst to discarding old frames of reference and embracing new ones. We have seen educators in our project look at disaggregated student-learning data and become outraged by inequities that they had not been aware of before. Simply examining data about schools that were closing achievement gaps has caused others to question their belief that these gaps are inevitable. When teachers observed that teaching in a new way actually reached more students, they changed their assumptions about teaching and learning. Through their collaborative inquiry, many Data Team members threw out unproductive, blame-the-victim explanations of students’ poor performance and shifted the focus to instruction.
Assumption 3:
Collaborative inquiry—a process where teachers construct their understanding of student-learning problems and invent and test out solutions together through rigorous and frequent use of data and reflective dialogue—unleashes the resourcefulness and creativity to continuously improve instruction and student learning.
Teachers possess tremendous knowledge, skill, and experience. Collaborative inquiry creates a structure for them to share that expertise with each other, discover what they are doing that is working and do more of it, and confront what isn’t working and change it. When teachers generate their own questions, engage in dialogue, and make sense of data, they develop a much deeper understanding of what is going on relative to student learning. They develop ownership of the problems that surface, seek out research and information on best practices, and adopt or invent and implement the solutions they generate. The research base on the link between collaborative, reflective practice of teachers and student learning is well established (Little, 1990; Louis, Kruse, & Marks, 1996; McLaughlin & Talbert, 2001). When teachers engage in ongoing collaborative inquiry focused on teaching and learning and making effective use of data, they improve results for students.
Assumption 4:
A school culture characterized by collective responsibility for student learning, commitment to equity, and trust is the foundation for collaborative inquiry. In the absence of such a culture, schools may be unable to respond effectively to the data they have.
This assumption is based on a dual meaning of the word responsibility. As in our first assumption, responsibility implies the moral imperative. But it also holds another meaning, which is, quite literally, the ability to respond: “response-ability” (Wellman & Lipton, 2004). Long before state tests, plenty of data were available to let us know some students were not learning—students slumping down in their seats; going through day after day of school without being engaged; having poor grades, poor attendance and high dropout rates. However, in the absence of a collaborative culture where everyone takes responsibility and is committed to improving student learning, educators literally could not respond to the data. Schools that have “response-ability” do not leave student learning to chance. As Rick DuFour and his colleagues (2004) describe it, “They create a schoolwide system of interventions that provides all students with additional time and support when they experience initial difficulty in their learning” (p. 7). Collaborative schools are organized in grade-level or course- or subject-based teams where this response-ability is enacted as part of the daily work of teachers.
A hallmark