Examining Monitoring Data Lani Seikaly mdk12.org/data/course

Examining Your Monitoring Data Plan for data dialogues Find time for data dialogues Lead data dialogues Communicate expectations for data dialogues

Plan for data dialogues According to Rick DuFour, principals must provide a school context that fosters job-embedded professional development and with creating in their schools the collaborative culture of a professional learning community provide the focus, parameters, and support to help teams function effectively. From a JSD article entitled, In the Right Context

More specifically, principals who are staff development leaders must: 1) Provide time for collaboration in the school day and school year. Providing time for teachers to work together does not require keeping students at home and/or an infusion of new resources. Principals as staff development leaders work with staff to identify no-cost strategies that enable teachers to work together on a regular basis while students are on campus.

2) Identify critical questions to guide the work of collaborative teams. The impact of providing time for teachers to engage in collective inquiry will be determined to a great extent by the nature of the questions teachers are considering. Principals must help teams frame questions that focus on critical issues of teaching and learning.

3) Ask teams to create products as a result of their collaboration 3) Ask teams to create products as a result of their collaboration. The best way to help teachers use their collaborative time productively is to ask them to produce and present artifacts in response to the critical questions they are considering. Examples might include statements of student outcomes by units of instruction, development of new units to address gaps between state standards and local curriculum, creation of common assessments and rubrics, articulation of team protocols or norms to guide the interactions of team members, or formulation of improvement plans based on analysis of student achievement data.

4) Insist that teams identify and pursue specific student achievement goals. The driving force behind the effort to create a collaborative culture must be improved results. Principals foster improved results when they ask teaching teams to identify and pursue specific, measurable student achievement goals.

5) Provide teams with relevant data and information 5) Provide teams with relevant data and information. When every teacher has access to information on his or her students performance in meeting agreed upon standards, on valid assessments, in comparison to other students trying to achieve the same standards, both individual teachers and teams improve their effectiveness.

The Principal’s Challenge What expectations can you give your instructional teams that will ensure they use student data to make the kinds of instructional decisions that would result in improved student achievement? How do you expect these teams of teachers to collaborate in this effort? What do you want the end product(s) to look like? How can teachers demonstrate that they have used this information to inform instruction?

Find time for data dialogues An ASCD article in Educational Leadership, entitled, “Finding Time for Collaboration” by Mary Anne Raywid offers 15 examples of how schools are experimenting with creative ways to make or find time for shared reflection.

Find time for data dialogues In the March 2000 issue of Education Update, Dan Galloway, principal of Stevensville High School, is quoted as saying, “Teachers didn’t want collaborative time in addition to the school day — they wanted it as part of their school day.” Teachers found time by deciding to arrive at school 15 minutes early on the first day of the week and delay students starting classes by 30 minutes so that teams could collaborate..

Find time for data dialogues “To keep teachers from using planning time for routine activities like grading papers, Galloway requires his teachers to produce common assessments, rubrics, data analysis on assessment, and strategies for improving.” They were not asked to submit agendas or minutes of meetings, but rather the products they produced

Leading Data Dialogues requires a focus, data, guiding questions, and an understanding of the collaborative inquiry process. assists teams in making shared meaning of data, in surfacing multiple perspectives, in separating data from inference, and in making data-driven decisions. Though the data is key to the dialogue, the process of collaborative inquiry drives the results.

Leading Data Dialogues It is important that group leaders develop skills in managing, modeling, mediating, and monitoring effective group process and that groups develop strong collaborative norms.

Seven Norms of Collaborative Work Pausing Paraphrasing Probing Putting ideas on the table Paying attention to self and others Presuming positive presuppositions Pursuing a balance between advocacy and inquiry developed by Laura Lipton and Bruce Welman

Paying attention to self and others: Meaningful dialogue is facilitated when each group member is conscious of self and others and is aware of not only what s/he is saying, but how it is said and how others are responding. This includes paying attention to learning styles when planning for, facilitating, and participating in group meetings. Responding to others in their own language forms is one manifestation of this norm.

Presuming positive presuppositions: Assuming that others’ intentions are positive promotes and facilitates meaningful dialogue and eliminates unintentional put-downs. Using positive presuppositions in your speech is one manifestation of this norm.

Pursuing a balance between advocacy and inquiry: Pursuing and maintaining a balance between advocating a position and inquiring about one’s own and others’ positions assists the group to become a learning organization.

Good data-driven dialogue leads to data-driven decisions Good data-driven dialogue leads to data-driven decisions. If you have organized ongoing data dialogues among stakeholders, it is much more likely that they will feel ownership for the data-decisions you collectively make.

Guidelines for Leading Data Dialogues Choose a focus for the discussion. For example What does the data tell us about our student’s performance on drawing inferences? Choose a format for the data that is easy to read.  If teachers are bringing their own classroom data, decide on a common format. Set ground rules for the discussion and enforce them. Model collaborative group norms. Provide adequate time for dialogue.  Otherwise, you will have difficulty reaching common understanding. Keep the focus on improvement, not on blame. Guard against early conclusions of why the data look like they do. Instead, focus your discussion on identifying the questions the data raise.

Communicate expectations for data dialogues Write a memo to your staff that describes your expectations that teams or departments participate in ongoing data dialogues that will promote their ongoing use of data to inform instruction. Be sure to identify the reason, focus, and end products for these dialogues.

Staff members should be able to answer the following questions: Why does my principal expect me to participate in data dialogues? How will it benefit students? Who’s in charge of ensuring this happens? How often does my principal expect me to participate in data dialogues? When? How will my principal know that I am doing it? What am I expected to produce as end products to these dialogues? What am I expected to do with these end products?