2012 SCORE Prize Winners: Using Data to Enhance Learning | Page 9

USING DATA TO ENHANCE
STUDENT LEARNING
Over the last few years, Covington teachers have
become very data-savvy and have come to see the
value of data analysis for all of their decision making.
The school collects and analyzes summative, interim,
and formative data and shares the information with
families to engage them in the learning of their children. Critical components that led to effectiveness in
this area include the development of the Formative
Assessment Practice PLC, the Covington High School
Data-Driven Instruction Policy, and the specific steps
taken to ensure that all teachers implement and
use formative assessments in their daily and weekly
practices.
The Formative Assessment Practice PLC. The
Formative Assessment Practice PLC was created two
years ago to help the school identify and address
areas in need of improvement. The group has helped
set the expectation that every core content area will
administer a diagnostic test every four and a half
weeks. The group meets monthly to discuss teachers’
understanding of how to create, administer, and interpret assessments. During the past year, the group has
also been instrumental in helping staff prepare for
new online assessments aligned with the Common
Core State Standards. The group has also helped
teachers learn to create common assessments related to standards mastery and the ACT content.
In addition, the PLC examines broader indicators
of student academic performance, examining test
scores in all content areas, attendance, and school
climate, in addition to other areas. They recommend
ways to better understand student performance and
assessment data and place the data in the context
of student motivation. Members of the PLC also help

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Pathways to the Prize
Lessons from the 2012 SCORE Prize School Winners

teachers see that students need to believe they can
be successful before they take an assessment. “They
have so many people telling them that they are not
smart,” one teacher said. “They need us as teachers
to really build them up.”
The Covington High School data-driven instruction
policy. Covington teachers are provided with a policy
that outlines the school’s expectations around how
data should be used to guide instruction. For
example:
• Every teacher who instructs a class with an Endof-Course exam is required to administer a pretest
at the beginning of the school year. This practice
enables teachers to review where each student
scores relative to their predicted score.
• Each teacher has students take practice tests
every four and a half weeks. This allows teachers to
check the progress of each student. If mastery of
material that was taught is not evident, the teacher
is expected to reteach and then administer another
practice test to check whether the re-teaching is
effective.
• Teachers who teach courses without End-ofCourse tests are required to use ACT predictions to
guide their instruction. They select an ACT area that
best correlates with their content and give students
a pretest in that area. Pretests are compared with
students’ predictions and teachers use an Excel
spreadsheet to track and monitor progress of each
student.
• Practice ACT tests are administered every four and
a half weeks to check for mastery of integrated
standards that have been taught.