Using Data to Enhance Student
Learning
Teachers in each school are required to engage
in comprehensive analysis of test results for their
students and develop a summary of outcomes and
action steps for improvement. Data are shared with
each student, and his or her parents know what
the student has mastered and which standards still
need to be addressed. In several schools, information on standards mastery for each student is sent
home as part of the nine-week report card.
Assessment systems. Hamblen County has trained
its leaders to integrate formative and summative assessments seamlessly into instruction. The
curriculum leadership team engaged in several
book studies, including an analysis of Jan Chappuis’
Seven Strategies of Assessment for Learning, which
organizes assessment activities around the questions of “Where am I going?,” “Where am I now?,”
and “How can I close the gap?” The group also read
Ahead of the Curve, a collection of articles edited
by Joseph Ellis, and discussed the challenges of
assessment from a classroom, system, and leadership point of view.
Data warehouse system. Hamblen County’s data
warehouse system is accessible on its district
website and houses aggregated and disaggregated
test scores in 10 areas, including Adequate Yearly
Progress, test scores for grades 2-8; Tennessee
Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS) data;
attendance and graduation rates; ACT, EXPLORE,
PLAN, AP; Gateway and End-of-Course exams;
writing assessments; suspensions and expulsions;
and student demographics. When the district
receives data from the state, the district leadership
team verifies calculations, encourages principals to
check the accuracy of all data, and poses questions
to the state department and to the SAS Institute, the
state’s TVAAS provider. Examining the data in this
fashion develops the data literacy of district educators. School and district data are provided from the
district office in a form that is accessible and easily
understood by faculty and staff.
“Hamblen County Data Dashboard”
http:/
/hamblencounty.schoolinsites.com/
?DivisionID=3780&ToggleSideNav=
The district also collects and analyzes data from
the Jump Start kindergarten program, which is an
annual event that occurs each July during which incoming kindergarten students are invited to attend
half-day kindergarten for a week. During this time,
they become oriented to the school building and
school routines and are pre-assessed by a certified
teacher who provides data to kindergarten teachers
to use beginning on the first day of instruction in the
fall.
Hamblen also takes careful steps to ensure that
it uses its teacher assessments and evaluations
to help educators and students benefit the most
from them. In addition to the group walkthroughs
conducted to assess rigor in classrooms, the district
hosts multiple model school collaboration meetings that focus on the implementation of the state’s
teacher evaluation system in the district. Discussions focus on how to implement the system with
fidelity and consistency and how to organize the
support of the central office to help administrators
in this task.
System data coaches. Recognizing the key role
that data analysis plays in supporting school improvement, leadership development, and teacher
growth, Hamblen County employs a system data
coach. School data teams work with the data coach
to disaggregate data, analyze trends, and discover
areas of strength and weakness. They then work
with the district’s department of instruction to design interventions in response to the needs.
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Pathways to the Prize
Lessons from the 2012 SCORE Prize District Winner