USING DATA TO ENHANCE
STUDENT LEARNING
these data to design their own ongoing assessments
and to tailor instruction and, in some cases, assessment, to specific groups of students.
Rose Park’s educators and administrators deeply
engage in data analysis and use it to drive school and
student improvement. They use formal and informal
assessment data to help determine the proper course
for each of their students.
Informal assessment data. Rose Park uses two
sources of informal data to augment their formal
performance measures. While they see this information as less official than the formal assessment
results, teachers possess a sense of confidence from
the supplemental knowledge about student performance supplied by the informal data. Currently, Rose
Park uses the online programs Study Island and Think
Through Math to supplement their knowledge of their
students’ understanding and progress toward mastery. While typically used for intervention instruction
or to provide supplemental information, Rose Park’s
teachers use the information from these programs to
identify student weaknesses and to motivate students to push harder.
The school’s teachers and academic staff—including
the numeracy and literacy coaches—evaluate student
performance regularly to assess how well students
are progressing. The information is used to make
decisions about student placement in appropriate
courses and ability groups that are altered based on
student progress throughout the year.
Formal assessment data. Rose Park uses three
major formal data sources to assess academic
develop- me