Data-driven teachers

I've been getting a lot of positive feedback on the white paper that I wrote last year for Microsoft so I thought I would share it as a resource here. I wrote Data-Driven Teachers with the intent of trying to concisely summarize the great work being done on data-driven school reform by folks such as Mike Schmoker, Rick DuFour, Victoria Bernhardt, Douglas Reeves, Rick Stiggins, etc.

Data-Driven Teachers is only ten pages long and utilizes the data-driven change framework that I have used with thousands of educators from across the country. Each section of the paper describes what teachers and principals should be doing for that particular data-driven concept. The last page of the paper is a table from a draft of the Professional Development Framework for Data-Driven School Improvement that I created for the Chicago (IL) Public Schools.

Data-Driven Teachers is a nice introduction to the concepts of data-driven school reform and is a good reminder of some essential activities that often are missing in school organizations. School districts have been using it to quickly ramp up their teachers and administrators conceptually, to give their educators a common framework and language for discussion, and to remind staff of key actions that need to occur as they work to better utilize student learning data to improve instructional and organizational decision-making.

If you find the white paper useful, drop me a comment!

Comments

[Steve Poling]

1.

Thanks for sharing your white paper. It is so easy to read and follow along with that I will pass it along to my colleagues. This will be of great help to us. One thing that we have been discussing in our district is related to SMART goals. We have been encouraged by a consultant to focus on continuous improvement (ie. All students will improve their reading proficiency) rather than select percentages (some call arbitrary) for our targets. I think your paper will add to our discussions in that area. Thanks!

[Chris]

2.

I teach educational technology and used it last semester with a graduate class (mostly in service teachers). They got a lot out of it. I was wondering if you were familiar with Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) therapy? It is an intensely data driven educational approach AND it is done expertly by people with no experience in education or data collection (many parents running home-based education programs for children with Autism).

I think the two worlds--data driven teachers and ABA parents--could learn a lot from each other.

Chris