Why Harness Data

Why

This website and the accompanying blog offers my thoughts on how we can strengthen our public schools and communities. There are no magic bullets to learning, teaching, and leading. And all three functions are essential to the pursuit of happiness and the well being of every community. Learning is hard! Teaching is hard! Leading is hard! Still, we must do this difficult work to help all 50 million children in over 20,000 school districts across the nation to grow and thrive. A low-cost/no-cost beginning might start with understanding and learning how to harness data.

How

To understand and then make data work for you and the community, I believe it is better to be somewhat correct than precisely wrong. You ask: What data? Data can be from numerous public sources: attendance and behavior data; state, district, and school assessment data; student engagement and classroom grade data; among others. On this data journey, we can no longer be Data Rich and Information Poor (“DRIP”). What matters on this journey are the conversations that we have in order to meet the needs of the whole child. We should know every student by strength, name and need. Furthermore, we must move upward on this knowledge axis beyond information into insights, decisions and actions.

What

I believe every community can become great when all concerned join to work together as one determined team. In a determined team, people discover, learn, and figure things out. I believe we spend too much energy judging our actions. We fail to appreciate the progress we have made. And we spend less time planning the journey. These ideas remain a promise. In a great community, every student grows and thrives. Our current educational system has not yet delivered on this pledge.

Educational Statistics

Do you know how well prepared public-school teachers with 5 or fewer years of teaching experience feel for teaching their subject matter? Over 81% felt prepared or well prepared.

Do you know how well prepared these teachers felt in meeting state content standards? Content standards refer to what we as a community said we want all students to know and can do. These standards vary by states. Over 75% felt prepared or well prepared.

Do you know how well prepared these teachers were to use data from student assessment to inform their practice? Barely 53% felt prepared or well prepared! Great teachers know how to use student data from assessments results to ensure gaps in knowledge are addressed.