DATA DRIVEN
A STATEWIDE GRANT TURNS TEST SCORES INTO TEACHING STRATEGIES
By MEGAN MONSON
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It is precisely 8 a.m. on a Thursday morning, and all four third-grade teachers at Tom McCall Elementary School are gathered in Mrs. Alexander’s classroom. For the next 55 minutes, the topic — as it is three times a week at different grade levels in the Redmond School District — is data. Specifically, how to use the conclusions drawn from test results to adjust teaching strategies, so students become more successful at building their vocabulary.
The teacher data team began by using OAKS data and classroom observations to identify literacy and math vocabulary as a weak spot in their students’ learning. The word walls in this particular classroom bear mute testimony to the work already being done: colorful vocabulary charts offer a matrix of math words, nonlinguistic clues and their definitions.
Today, the team is looking at recent test results and discussing teaching strategies on how to build lessons so students understand the words in context, aren’t just writing sentences, and will continue to use them outside of school. By the time they’re done, the teachers have spent nearly an hour in a productive collaboration, sharing lesson ideas, methodologies and brain power — all focused on math and reading.
This scene is happening in classrooms across the state, as teachers are increasingly using data to make decisions about curriculum strategies, with the ultimate goal of increasing achievement.
THE OREGON DATA PROJECT
Much of that activity can be credited to the Oregon “Direct Access to Achievement” Project, a grant-funded initiative offering a full slate of professional development that teaches strategies for accessing, analyzing and using data to target instruction to the needs of individual students.
The Oregon DATA Project, funded with a $4.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, is a highly collaborative effort with a design based on the needs of educators in the field. The project, now in its third year, is recognized nationally as a leading model of professional development on data use. It is a project of the Oregon Department of Education, with support by the Education Enterprise Steering Committee (EESC — see sidebar, next page).
“The project has benefited enormously from the grassroots support it has received from the very beginning, when we traveled to school districts across the state to ask people what they needed to use data effectively,” says Mickey Garrison, the project’s training director; she is also the school improvement director for the EESC.
Thousands of teachers have been trained through the project, along with administrators, ESD personnel, school board members, state education officials, higher education representatives and members of the public.
The Oregon DATA Project’s current focus is on building sustainability by supporting the efforts of regional centers to build strong data teams and professional learning communities in participating districts. About 160 educators from all corners of the state have been certified to teach the training developed by the project. The training is also available on-demand through the project’s website (www.oregondataproject.org) and through instructional DVDs, about 1,000 of which have been distributed to date.
The project’s funding comes to an end in September of 2011, and organizers are exploring grants and other funding options to extend the work.
DATA IN THE CLASSROOM
In today’s world of educational accountability, teachers have access to a dizzying amount of information. Having access to data is not the same as using it effectively to influence instruction, however—that takes knowledge, practice and skill.
Session evaluations from teachers attending Oregon DATA Project training have included comments such as these: “For the first time, I understand data and how to use it to improve student learning,” and “I have felt my teaching to be much more focused and deliberate and I believe that this is what data collection is supposed to do for both myself and the students.”
At Humbolt Elementary, a K-5 school in the tiny Eastern Oregon town of Canyon City, teachers are harnessing the power of that data to make informed decisions about what they teach.
After attending training through the Oregon DATA Project, district testing coordinator Susie Garrison began working with the elementary staff at Humbolt on writing. “We decided early on that there would be no preconceptions, that we would let data drive all of our decisions.” Garrison guided the team through a careful process of gathering and studying test results and other data, and identifying the problem (writing conventions). The data team set a goal of increasing the conventions score on writing samples, and strategies included writing in complete sentences and doing daily oral language at all grades.
At the mid-year data collection, teachers had already exceeded their yearly goals. At the end of the year, fourth grade teachers got the results of state writing assessments — the conventions score was high. “They were so excited to see their results,” Garrison says.
As soon as school administration started seeing the positive results, Garrison says, “they started seeing it as a way to make really good curriculum decisions.” A high school/middle school teacher went to DATA Project training and became certified as a trainer herself. Since then, she’s started a language arts data team that includes middle and high school teachers. “We’ll be doing this district wide next year,” Garrison says.
“The things we are doing are really making a difference to our students and that is the bottom line,” Garrison says.
In Redmond, the results are also compelling. Since data teams were formed two years ago, the district has seen a 15.7 percent gain in math and 11.7 percent gain in language arts for all students. For students with disabilities, the numbers are even more dramatic: a 47 percent gain in both math and language arts. At the elementary level, there is no achievement gap between students in poverty and the general population; at one school, this demographic actually outperforms the general population.
We have teachers now who can’t do their lesson plans without looking at their data,” says Becky Stoughton, a teacher trainer from Redmond School District. “They have to have the data to narrow in on what the kids need.”
BUILDING THE FUTURE
One of the most important features of the model is its focus on teachers, and on job-embedded professional development. “One of the best things about the project is that the training is done onsite with the whole staff, as opposed to sending a teacher or two to an off-site workshop and then sending them home,” says Analicia Santos, an instruction and assessment specialist for Douglas ESD who is working with data teams from the Oakland School District. “It’s an opportunity for teachers to direct — they look at the data, make the inferences, investigate it and actually become part of the strategy and goal-setting.”
Daymond Monteith, secondary curriculum supervisor for the Klamath Falls City School District, agrees. “We’re really targeting every classroom teacher,” he says. “It’s not just one key individual who deserves to hear this, but everyone who participates.”
The collaborative nature of the model, where K-12 and ESD trainers do the bulk of the training, is also helping build a statewide network that breaks down the barriers of geographic isolation. Teachers across the state are contacting each other to share ideas and resources, transforming the state of Oregon into one large professional learning community.
At a recent training in Klamath Falls, for example, a teacher team from Redmond is helping Southern Oregon districts map out the infrastructure needed in order to have effective data teams. The approach resonated with many attendees. “It’s not about how we are going to use this data to improve OAKS scores,” says Shawn Spillane, a sixth-grade teacher at Mills Elementary School in Klamath Falls. “It’s more like how do we use the data to improve our teaching so all students benefit.”
The Klamath Falls event is just one of several taking place around the state recently, as the sustainability phase of the project heats up. Districts in seven geographic regions of the state, represented by Education Service District partnerships, are receiving financial support from the project in return for taking the training deeper. In addition, three ESDs have been chosen to study implementation considerations, including evaluation of the effectiveness of the project.
“I think teachers realize that this isn’t just another program or one more thing to do,” Spillane says. “It’s really about using skills and curriculum to improve student achievement, and that’s what teachers want to do — they want students to be successful and do well.”
For more information about the Oregon DATA Project, visit the website at www.oregondataproject.org, or contact your local ESD. Training resources, including Instructional Guides and more than 40 video clips, are available online and also can be requested on DVD through the website.
COLLABORATION IS KEY
The Oregon DATA Project’s collaborative nature begins with its supporting organization—the Education Enterprise Steering Committee. The EESC is a partnership between the Governor’s Office, Oregon Department of Education, Oregon University System, K-12, and Oregon Association of Education Service Districts. The EESC provides oversight to the DATA Project, and the group’s school improvement director, Mickey Garrison, serves as the project’s training director.
The DATA Project’s work complements the strong work going on at the state level through the Oregon Department of Education. ODE recently wrapped up Phase III of the KIDS project, which created a framework that allows a school district to electronically transfer student records to another district, as well as transcripts from school districts to Oregon universities and colleges.
The Oregon School Board Association has taken its support on the road. Two OSBA employees have become certified DATA Project trainers, and they offer the training to school boards across the state.
The Oregon Association of Education Service Districts has been an invaluable asset to the project, and is driving the sustainability phase of the project. Teachers polled in the early stages of the project said they wanted the training to be delivered regionally, and ESDs in all corners of the state have delivered, providing impressive support and training to their component districts.
Higher education has also been involved with the DATA Project. Teachers can earn college credit for the work they are doing in their data teams, and several private universities are using the content from the project in their course work to strengthen the collaboration between K-12 and higher education.
Date: 6/18/2010
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