A school system is successful when it uses a comprehensive assessment system based on clearly-defined performance measures. The assessment system is used to assess student performance on expectations for student learning, identify gaps between expectations for student learning and student performance, evaluate the effectiveness of curriculum and instruction, and determine interventions to improve student performance. The assessment system yields timely and accurate information that is meaningful and useful to system and school leaders, teachers, and other stakeholders in understanding student performance, system and school effectiveness, and the results of improvement efforts (Quality systems standards. p. 3).
Webster’s dictionary (2009) defines Data as the collection of facts from which conclusions may be drawn. Teachers and leaders can choose to carefully examine these data or completely ignore them. Using and analyzing data are efficient ways to focus and improve any continuous improvement effort. Three questions that teachers need to answer when analyzing classroom data are: 1) Where are we now; 2) Where do we want to be; and 3) How do we know when we get there?
Districts know how to collect data and develop improvement plans, but what teachers need to know is how to make sense out of the data. Teachers need tools that allow them to know why they are getting the results they are getting and what they need to do to get better results. The current state accountability system data are not available for months after the test has been taken; when the data are revealed they are out dated; this is what’s called Lag Measures. When Lag Measures are revealed, the tools and techniques that produced the measure are in the past, what needed to be corrected (McChesney, Covey, and Huling, 2012). White, in his book Beyond the Numbers: Making Data Work for Teachers & School Leaders (2005) called this the Rearview-mirror effect. The Rearview-mirror effect is defined simply as planning the future based on past events, and it has four debilitating characteristics. The first relates to responding to a continually changing reality based on past data; it fails to anticipate challenges and does not give fresh feedback from stakeholders about the reality they are facing now. The second effect is waiting for the road to reveal itself by waiting for annual assessment results. The third effect is narrowing the focus on one single area, only on what students do. Successful school systems know that teacher behavior, professional development, learning conditions, resources, curriculum alignment, assessment, common planning, and a host of other antecedent conditions and structures, influence student achievement. The fourth effect is a look back to when times were simpler; when districts and teachers received a not-so-favorable result on the state assessment; or back to a time when there was no state assessment and accountability. These effects can bring discouragement and resentment to a system that is trying to improve.
Clearly, Lag measures are not an effective way to measure what is working and what is not when it comes to student achievement. A preferred process, lead measures are those measures that drive success on the Lag measures; in essence, they measure the new behaviors that are working to help breed that success (McChesney, Covey, and Huling, 2012).Teachers need to focus on the Lead measures in their classrooms, those behaviors, teaching techniques, and instructional strategies that “lead” to student academic success. To produce Lead measures, data need to be collected and analyzed and used to make improvements. Next, what good are data without analysis? Analysis is defined by Webster’s (1983) as “a separating or breaking up of any whole into its parts so as to find out their nature, proportion, function, relationship, etc.” The process of analysis as it relates to education is to examine the whole by breaking it apart and looking for relationships that influenced student achievement. When analyzing data, teachers and school leaders should be looking for causes that produced the results; Reeves (2004) calls these antecedents. Antecedents are those structures and conditions that proceed, anticipate, or predict excellence in performance. Antecedents are also causes that correlate with effects in student behavior and achievement (results), such as classroom routines, grading procedures, and teacher-student relationships and connections. If a school desires continuous improvement, in student achievement, the school needs to identify antecedents, structure their reliability, and test their accuracy to be replicated in other classrooms (Reeves, 2004).
McChesney, Chris; Covey, Sean; Huling, Jim (2012-04-24). The 4 Disciplines of Execution (p. 2). Simon & Schuster, Inc. Kindle Edition.
Quality systems standards. (2010, October 20). Retrieved from http://www.advanc-ed.org/districts
Reeves, D. B. (2004).Accountability in Action: A Blueprint for Learning Organizations (2nd ed.). Advanced Learning Press.
The Prepared Student 