Pub. 1 2011-2012 Issue 1

13 By Deborah L. Swensen, PhD, Principal | Hawthorn Academy D ata can be a powerful tool to increase both student learning and improving instruction. The Hawthorn Academy faculty has established a culture that supports a collaborative process of inquiry, planning and re- flection based on data. Our culture uses both state summative (CRTs and DWA) and school chosen formative data. The state summative assessments are a resource to review student trends and to engage faculty in collaborative deci- sion making. By drilling down to look at student progress on standards and objectives in each CRT, we have evaluated the success of student learning over time, compared successful instructional strategies across grade level teachers and arrived at a consensus around a school-wide instructional action plan. Also, really looking at the summary data of the students is a powerful way to discuss instructional strategies, tap into teach- ers’ insights and direction for deeper inquiry. For teachers to embrace using data, it has to be manageable, especially with the state assessments. For our yearly begin- ning meetings, the administration disaggregates the data and creates visual graphs. Teams are also provided with the individual names of children and their levels over the years. Teachers then put each child’s name on a card and place it under their proficiency level for that content and color code them if they moved up or down in proficiency. We review how they did on the CRTs and evaluate students’ gains or losses in proficiency and why – even if they just moved from a level 4 to a 3. The physical process of charting students by name impacts the teachers and they remember the individual students and their proficiency levels. We create a picture of who is learning and who is not learn- ing. The data we chose to include has influenced the types of questions we ask. We use formative tests that help us determine the levels of each student on each skill. Lively discussions have occurred when formative assessment data differs from antidotal running records. Rather than ignore this discrepancy, collab- orative analysis helps to inform us about individual student learning and determine factors that impact differing results. It clarifies circumstances where students do better and allows us to translate these to other situations. Formative data provides ongoing information about student learning. Before choosing a formative assessment, we deter- mined what we both wanted and needed to know. We evaluated possible assessments to ensure that they provided information we needed, were truly aligned to our cores, and that they had quality questions. We knew that the formative assessments we chose should have clear questions without confusing distract- ers in the answer choices and should be able to assess all stu- dents without confounding the results by poorly or confusing question stems or possible answers. In addition, we provide ongoing training for our staff in the collection of and use of interpretation of our data. As an administration, we break down the data and chart it by standard and objective for the whole school and for subgroups, thus enabling our faculty to identify and celebrate our gains and find any trends. They look at the charts, discuss them and identify areas in which we need to review instructional strate- gies and vertically team to help students gain proficiency on a skill. Subgroup disaggregation allows us to know that these groups were not the reason for low scores in a particular stan- dard. We also discuss the collection and use of formative data in grades that do not take year-end state tests to help inform us if students are learning the skills necessary to succeed in the upper grades. We then determine school-wide academic goals that are then a part of our school improvement plan. Finally, students are not the only ones impacted by the use of data at our school. At the beginning of the year, after looking at the data, all staff members set individual goals. Each sets an individual goal for each curricular school-wide goal and how they will measure success. We are striving to not only look at student academic growth, but staff professional growth. The staff reflects on their goals throughout the year. We as a staff realize that we are thinking big, but we are starting small in data collecting, analyzing and application of the findings. Dr. Deborah Swensen is the Director of Hawthorn Academy. Deborah completed her PhD in Educational Leadership and Foundations from Brigham Young University. She has extensive experience in the classroom, assessment and administration. She can be reached at dswensen@hawthornacademy.org . The Power of DATA