Introduction

How can educators use the piles of student assessment data available in their schools to improve teaching and learning? The Data Wise Improvement process, described in detail in the main textbook for this course, offers a step-by-step guide for taking on this seemingly daunting task. Written by leading researchers and practitioners in the field, the central message is that using data effectively is at its core a leadership challenge. All the number-crunching in the world won?t make a bit of difference to learning and understanding if educators don?t actively discuss the data they have, and design and implement thoughtful action based on their analysis. This course is designed to help you understand the work involved in the first two phases of the Data Wise Improvement Process (Prepare and Inquire) and to guide you toward engaging your colleagues in these activities.

Overarching Course Goals / Throughlines

The core questions we will investigate during this course are:

 
• What are the most effective strategies educational leaders can use to frame the work of using data to improve instruction?

 
• How can educational leaders foster a school culture that supports using data to improve instruction, learning and understanding?

 
• How can educators come to terms with the mountains of data they have?

 
• How can educational leaders support meaningful discussions about data?

 
• How can educational leaders develop global connections to support their own understandings?

Course Texts:

Boudett, City & Murnane (2005), Data Wise: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Assessment Data to Improve Instruction (Cambridge, Harvard Education Press).

McDonald, J.P., N. Mohr, A. Dichter and E.C. McDonald (2003). The Power of Protocols: An Educator's Guide to Better Practice.   (New York: Teachers College Press).

Orientation Week

In this session you will become acquainted with the course web site and the role of instructors, coaches and learners in WIDE World courses.   You will meet your fellow course participants and learn about each other?s goals for the course, their backgrounds and leadership contexts.

Session Understanding Goals

0-1. Understand how instructors, coaches, and fellow learners will support your learning.

0-2. Understand the overarching goals for this course, participant responsibilities, and the course online environment.

0-3 Clarify your own learning goals for this course, and become acquainted with your instructors, coach, and fellow learners.

Session 1 - Data Wise Process and Practices

In this session you will begin to lay the foundation for using data wisely in your educational setting.   You will reflect on the ways in which you and your colleagues currently use data to improve instruction, and learn about concrete steps for organizing your setting to take on the kind of collaborative work that can lead to continuous instructional improvement.

In this session you will also engage in a candid assessment of the extent to which your school currently uses Data Wise Practices ? ways of working that research shows undergird successful implementation of the individual steps of the model.   Finally, you will create an inventory of all of the assessments used in your setting, and reflect on how you and your colleagues could use the data from these assessments more effectively.  

Session Understanding Goals

1-1. Appreciate using data to improve instruction as an intuitive, multi-step process.

1-2. Appreciate several specific Data Wise Practices regularly used in schools that are successful in the Data Wise Improvement Process.

1-3. Understand how to analyze your current practices with respect to the Data Wise Practices.

1-4 Understand what we mean by the term assessment, and understand the types of assessments that are administered in your school and how they are currently used.

Session 2 - Facing Adaptive and Technical Challenges

You will begin this session by engaging in a hands-on activity that allows you to explore the relationships between the various steps involved in the improvement process.   You will come to appreciate both the variety of valid approaches to this work and the need for you, as a school leader, to offer your colleagues a process that you can return to again and again as you all become proficient with this work.   Leading your faculty in using data to improve instruction will require that you understand from the start the nature of the challenges you face.   Although many educators assume that using data effectively requires developing technical skills, in reality the most difficult aspect of the work involves supporting colleagues in adapting the ways they think and work.   Once you understand the difference between technical and adaptive challenges, you will apply the six principles of adaptive change to a challenge that is of particular importance in your setting. Finally, you will read a chapter that lays out some fundamental principles of assessment literacy and reflect on how you might best be able to share some of this seemingly technical material with your faculty to ensure that as a team you are able to interpret assessment results appropriately.

Session Understanding Goals

2-1. Understand, although there is no "right" way of organizing the work of improvement, why it is helpful for you and your colleagues at your school to agree on a process you will use to guide the work.

2-2. Understand the differences between adaptive and technical challenges.

2-3. Understand how using data to improve instruction is at its heart an adaptive challenge.

2-4. Understand fundamental principles that are essential for appropriate interpretation of student achievement data.

2-5. Appreciate different types of assessments and different ways of reporting performance.

Session 3 - Displaying and Discussing Data

We have all heard that "a picture is worth a thousand words."   This is especially true when using data, but for many leaders within schools it may not be clear what kind of pictures could be most useful to share with colleagues.   In this session, you will engage in a hands-on exercise that allows you to grapple with data displayed in a variety of formats.   You will appreciate why particular types of displays are best suited telling particular kinds of stories, and why no one display or data source can by itself give a complete picture of student performance at your school.

Session Understanding Goals

3-1 Appreciate how data can be displayed in ways that stimulate productive conversation among groups of teachers.

3-2 Understand why converting data into charts is a powerful strategy for using data to serve as a catalyst for discussion.

3-3 Understand how to make effective decisions in designing useful charts, e.g.,:

 
• what measures you will use
 
• what questions you will ask
 
• what disaggregators you will use

3-4 Understand how drawing upon multiple forms of data can allow you to a more complete picture of student performance.

Session 4 - Collaboration and the "Power of Protocols"

You will then participate in a formal protocol for exploring one of these practices in more detail.   The experience of working through the protocol will give you a sense of the power that such protocols can have for helping to build the collaborative culture that undergirds the Data Wise process.

Session Understanding Goals

4-1. Understand how to use protocols and why they can be effective tools for structuring discussion.

4-2. Appreciate, through personal experience, what it feels like to participate in a protocol.

4-3. Understand how to prepare for improvement by organizing for collaborative work.

Session 5 - Creating Your Data Wise Plan

You begin this session by exploring ways in which schools can get a better handle on what students can and cannot do by looking deeply at multiple sources of student data.   This session then allows you to begin to synthesize what you have learned in this course by creating a Data Wise Plan.    This plan is not an action plan for improving instruction (that work will come later, once you have brought your colleagues on board and decided together what problem of practice you want to work together to solve) but rather a document designed to help you really think through how you can engage your colleagues in the Data Wise Improvement Process  

Session Understanding Goals

5-1. Understand why using data effectively requires digging deeply into multiple data sources.

5-2. Understand how to get started with the following steps in the Data Wise Process:

 
• choosing the right issue
 
• identifying preliminary questions about this issue
 
• planning who will be involved in addressing these questions
 
• being honest about what supporting practices your school already has in place and which ones you need to develop in order to move forward.
   

Session 6 - Revising Your Data Wise Plan

In this session, you complete your initial exploration of the "Prepare" and "Inquire" phases of the Data Wise process by thinking about examining instruction.   It is essential to get a clear picture of what is currently happening in classrooms if your school is going to be able to restate the "learner-centered problem" you identified by digging into student data as a "problem of practice" that educators can work together to do something about.   You will then incorporate this understanding, as well as feedback from your coach and peers, into a revised Data Wise Plan that you are excited to implement in your school.

Session Understanding Goals

6-1. Understand how restating the "learner-centered problem" as a "problem of practice" can help your faculty take ownership of student learning.

6-2. Appreciate the importance of helping your faculty develop a shared understanding of effective practice before you enter the Act phase of the work.

6-3. Understand how fully engaging in the Data Wise work will change the ways your colleagues work together and build this understanding into your Data Wise Plan.