LinkIt! (www.linkit.com), the K-12 education technology, assessment and data-management company, announced today the results from its “Step Back, Leap Forward Report: A 2012-2013 Data-Driven Instruction Survey,” a nationwide survey of over 500 K-12 school principals and district administrators. The survey asked participants about education issues such as accountability, assessment, technology, student performance, teacher efficacy and others.
Conclusions from this survey include:
- Importance of data: 90% of respondents believe that data will be the primary driver of what teachers teach, how they teach, and to whom they teach within the next 4 years (67% in the next 2 years)
- District-level support: 60% of the respondents believe that district-level support is “not enough” in all areas of data use. Compared to 2 years ago, perception of district-level support has dropped in all areas
- Low teacher utilization: only 36% of respondents believe that over 60% of their teachers are actively using data to drive instruction.
- Low teacher proficiency: District level administrators and principals believe that only 16% of teachers are proficient in the use of data and that administrators are approximately 3 times more proficient
- Textbook assessments perceived to be lowest utility but highest cost: Only 5% of administrators find program-based tests provided with textbooks to be “very useful”
- Great concern for PARCC and Smarter Balanced: Over 30% of respondents expressed “great concern” with respect to taking these new high stakes tests in four categories: computer infrastructure, network and connectivity, analysis of assessments, practice assessment items
- Hardware preferences: 65% of the respondents perceive computers, laptops, and netbooks to have a great ROI. Interactive whiteboards (49%), tablets (46%), and clicker response systems (35%) are also perceived as very good investments. Smart/mobile phones and eReaders like Nook and Kindle were voted the least at 12%.
