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January 15, 2002
Accountability: Meeting The Challenge With Technology (con'td)
Learning from It All
All the assessment results in the world will be of no use unless we analyze them and learn from them. There are, of course, numerous computerized systems set up to track student information in K-12 schools. Increasingly, these systems are offering tools designed specifically for accountability purposes. Although we cannot begin to evaluate or even identify all of the options out there, the directory accompanying this article does describe several examples of popular tools for tracking and analyzing student performance.
Hartford's Anthony Amato is committed to using a variety of these tools to "drill down" on student data. In an interview with Technology & Learning (see "More @" www.techlearning.com) Amato observes that, "Some people think of data as cold facts. They think paying attention to the numbers is unfeeling or mercenary. But that's not the way I see it. If done correctly, data mining has high value-morally, ethically, and educationally. Analyzing the data is a way to shine a light on students, to identify problems, and to get an understanding about how to help."
 Until we take every failure as a personal loss, there will always be kids who are failing. As educators, we need to feel that failure in our hearts and our guts. The problem is not the kids; it is us! It is our inability to look at the data appropriately, to shine a light on each and every student. We need to focus on this constantly. All kids can make it! We just need to dig and probe until we figure out how to help them do so.
żAnthony Amato, superintendent of schools, Hartford (Conn.) Public Schools |
One of the first steps in the process is disaggregating the data-by school, by grade, by teacher, and by subgroups based on such criteria as gender or ethnicity. While simply reporting such information without follow-up can do more harm than good, Amato explains how his district uses disaggregated data as a starting point. "Suppose, for argument sake, we find that Latinas are scoring low in a particular area. That's when we sit down in focus groups and begin to analyze why this is happening. What's the root cause? After taking a closer look at the numbers and disaggregating them further, we might discover that the girls who are doing the worst are ones with high mobility rates; ones whose parents are migrant workers. Knowing this helps us anticipate the problem and tackle it. For example, perhaps we need to give them Web browsers so they can access learning resources from anywhere, even if they're moving around."
Mamaroneck's Sherry King takes a similar approach in her district. After working with a consultant to redesign their information system to allow it to report more effectively on longitudinal student achievement, Mamaroneck educators began looking closely at what could be learned from the data. "Rather than employing the usual model of giving a standardized test at the end of the year and basically ignoring the results because the students had already moved on," she explains in a chapter of the book Information Technology for Schools (Jossey-Bass, September 2000), "we worked to help all the teachers understand what the results suggested about their instructional practice and how their students achieved relative to other students in the school and across the district."
If done correctly, the "drilling" process very quickly narrows in on individual students and teachers and can be used to inform new directions and growth. At the same time, it can reveal other important information. For example, careful analysis of data by groups of educators in Mamaroneck has revealed everything from ongoing problems caused by a reading approach implemented years ago to mismatches between the tests being used and the skills being taught.
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