The Data Coach's Guide to Improving Learning for All Students. Katherine E. Stiles
and other improving schools give us hope. They dispel the myth that some students cannot learn; they inspire us to even greater levels of commitment and action to take on the biggest problems that schools face: cultures rife with resignation, isolation, stagnation, and mistrust; racist and classist attitudes and practices that result in failure to see and serve students who do not look or act like members of the dominant culture; outdated and inexcusable instructional practices; teachers who are not as well prepared as they need to be to teach to rigorous content standards; and ineffective and dangerous uses of student data. With our collective decades of work in school improvement, the authors do not underestimate the grip these problems have on schools’ and educators’ spirits. Yet we have witnessed every one of these seemingly insurmountable barriers begin to fall away when school teams learn to work together and use data and research to identify and tackle the causes of student failure. We know it can be done. We wrote this book to make the tools and the process these improving schools used available to every school seeking to enhance learning and build professional culture. We hope their success will inspire you to use collaborative inquiry to achieve similar or even greater success in your own schools.
How This Book Came About
Beginning in 2003, the Using Data Project, a collaboration between TERC and WestEd, set out to develop, pilot, and field-test a program to provide educators with the skills, knowledge, and dispositions to put school data to work to improve teaching and learning and close achievement gaps. The goal of the project was to prepare education professionals to serve as Data Coaches to lead a process of collaborative inquiry with school-based teams and to influence the culture of schools to be one in which data are used continuously, collaboratively, and effectively to improve teaching and learning. The project had education partners who were instrumental in influencing and shaping the Using Data Process, including Clark County School District (Las Vegas, Nevada) in collaboration with their Local Systemic Change Initiative, Mathematics and Science Education (MASE); several schools serving primarily Native American children on reservations in Arizona in collaboration with the Arizona Rural Systemic Initiative, based at the American Indian Programs at Arizona State University Polytechnic in Mesa, Arizona; and the Stark County Mathematics and Science Partnership, where we focused on seven urban school districts in the Canton, Ohio, area.
In addition, the project conducted two national field tests, one in collaboration with the Education Development Center’s K–12 Science Curriculum Dissemination Center. Field-testers gave us immediate feedback on the materials and the professional development and, in several cases, took the materials and implemented them in schools in which they were working, including schools in Los Angeles, California; Johnson County, Tennessee; and Colorado Springs, Colorado. Although our effort focused on mathematics and science improvement, schools quickly applied the process to all other content areas, demonstrating that the Using Data Process is generic and broadly applicable.
Through the rich experiences and work with our partner schools, the project gleaned a wealth of technical and practical knowledge about how to prepare Data Coaches to work with Data Teams in diverse settings, from large urban areas to mid-size cities to small rural schools. This book is the product of that work. It provides the knowledge and tools produced by the Using Data Project, including how to
design, implement, and sustain a districtwide (or projectwide) program of continuous improvement in diverse settings;
prepare Data Coaches to lead Data Teams in collaborative inquiry and high-capacity uses of data;
keep the focus on equity and closing achievement gaps;
increase the power, focus, and effectiveness of professional communities;
use data as a catalyst to powerful conversations about race/ethnicity, class, educational status, gender, and language differences;
get staff excited about using data regularly and collaboratively;
apply robust tools for making sense of data; and
connect data use to instructional improvement and learning results.
Purpose of the Book
Our first driving purpose for this book is to contribute to dramatic and permanent improvement in the way schools go about their business so that they make a greater positive difference in students’ lives. Through a combination of information (skill building and knowledge) and inspiration (will building), we intend for this book to guide educational leaders in unleashing the power of collaborative inquiry to improve schools.
What ignites the Using Data Process is will—the appetite, passion, choice, and determination to serve every child as if he or she were our own, a mindfulness of the awesome influence we have in the students’ lives that we touch, and a commitment to use that influence to produce the best possible results for every one of them. So a second purpose of this book is to strengthen your resolve and the resolve of others with whom you work to do whatever it takes to educate every student to the peak of his or her capacities. We provide tools and processes for opening up dialogue about the assumptions that underlie interpretations of the data, gaining clarity about the Data Team’s vision and purpose, shifting conversations away from blame and toward possibility, and staying focused on what is most important—the actions we can take to improve students’ learning and the quality of their lives.
Author and cultural proficiency expert Franklin CampbellJones says, “Get ethical before you get technical” (personal communication, December 10, 2005). This book intends to do both. “School improvement” without will and moral purpose—without a genuine commitment to all students—is an empty exercise in compliance that, in our experience, can do more harm than good. The authors have seen educators use data to “more accurately” track students, further widening the opportunity-to-learn gap. In response to achievement gaps, one school mandated lunchtime tutoring for all African American students—regardless of whether or not they failed the state test (Confrey & Makar, 2005). Avoiding these and other data-based disasters is not a technical matter. It is an ethical matter that begins with will, passion, and determination.
Our third purpose is to “get technical”—to build skills and knowledge about how to lead a process of collaborative inquiry with school-based Data Teams and to influence the culture of schools to be one in which data are used continuously, collaboratively, and effectively to improve teaching and learning. In the last few years, educators have been called upon to do work they have never done before and were, in most cases, never prepared to do, including
work productively in professional learning communities,
apply principles of cultural proficiency to data use and school improvement,
understand and draw sound inferences from a variety of different kinds of data,
accurately identify root causes of problems the data surface,
implement research-based instructional improvements linked to goals, and
monitor interim and long-term progress toward goals.
This book addresses this capacity crisis by providing you with detailed and technical guidance in how to engage in systematic and continuous improvement. You will learn how to move schools away from unproductive data practices and toward high-capacity uses of data that are built on a strong foundation of data literacy and collaborative inquiry knowledge, skills, and dispositions as well as a spiritual and moral commitment to serve each and every student.
Audience
This book is for anyone who wants to make and sustain change in schools. It is, of course, primarily for those who will serve as Data Coaches with responsibility for facilitating Data Teams. The book is also for school and district administrators, educational improvement project staff, education service center staff, foundations concerned with education, state department of education personnel, parent and community organizations, and others who are concerned about building