• All three schools emphasize student-centered
instruction. Whether students understand
material is more important to these schools than
whether teachers simply cover material in their
lessons. This represented a shift for many of the
schools’ teachers who were initially more accustomed to examining what they taught rather
than what students learned. Student-centered
instruction has also required teachers to spend
more time developing engaging and challenging
material, resulting in lessons that show students
the relevance of what they are learning.
• Professional learning communities have been
established to build teacher capacity and
advance various reform efforts. Specifically, the
schools use these groups as a venue for examining data for instructional planning purposes,
discussing effective instructional practices, diagnosing student misconceptions, and identifying
students in need of additional interventions.
Using Data to Enhance Student
Learning
Each of the SCORE Prize winners has leveraged
the power of data to improve student achievement.
They have each used data to track student progress, inform what happens in classrooms, and foster
collaboration.
• Each SCORE Prize winner takes steps to help
teachers become data-savvy. In all of the
schools, teachers are taught how to analyze test
scores so that they can easily identify what students
have learned, which instructional strategies appear
to be most effective in facilitating learning, and what
additional remediation students might need.
• John Sevier, Rose Park, and Covington all
publicly display data and share it with different
stakeholders. These practices are based on the
notion that displaying data are key to fostering
the kind of collaboration that is needed to help
students improve. At Rose Park, the staff members use a data wall to ensure that all students
are improving between benchmark assessments.
At John Sevier and Covington, spreadsheets are
used to track student mastery and identify areas
where insufficient progress has been made. At all
schools, data are shared with students and families so they know how students are progressing
toward their goals.
• All of the schools have strong formative assessment practices. All three schools assess
students daily or weekly, through exit tickets,
quick checks for understanding, or mini-assessments. All use interim assessments at least every
nine weeks, and analyze the data as soon as they
are available so that they can quickly determine
needs for re-teaching or intervention.
Pathways to the Prize
Lessons from the 2012 SCORE Prize School Winners
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