How can K-12 schools use technology and assessment to meet the No Child Left Behind requirements? This is a very nice description of the first two stages: Analysis for its own sake and Analysis for improved efficiency.
Drilling Down: Four Tips
The following are specific data points necessary to create an effective action plan.
1. Understand the performance of the current cohort in comparison to the previous and the next cohorts.
2. Collect information about individual student performance.
3. Identify specific skill areas that teachers are failing to secure.
4. Know whether teachers are teaching below the level of the standards being assessed. Data-driven decision making is an iterative process with each round of findings and additional data collection moving you closer and closer to the core issues.
Meeting AYP Goals
Successful stage two schools apply the following methods to measurable subgroups as required by NCLB.
1. Move from percentages to numbers to names.
2. Focus extra effort on marginal students.
3. Track student performance and adjust accordingly.
Structured Analysis Method
The most effective schools train teachers to ask the following about student assessment data.
1. Have I taught the content assessed by this item?
a. If yes, go to question two.
b. If no, is there anything to be learned? If the students performed well, can I reduce the amount of time I will spend when we get to this topic? How can I use this data as a baseline? Go to question five.
2. Did the students perform as well as I expected?
a. If yes, what are my expectations for performance on this item? What other assessment data do I have to establish my expectations? Go to question five.
b. If no, go to question three.
3. What do their attempts at answers tell me?
a. Are the students guessing the answer?
b. Do the students have a misconception (as evidenced by selecting the same distracter) and are solving the problem the wrong way?
4. What do I need to do to improve the students' performance?
a. Is a brief review sufficient?
b. Do I need to re-teach the concepts with different methods or from another perspective?
c. If the students have a misconception, how can I "un-teach" it and help them create proper understandings?
5. What actions will I take in the next day, the next week, and the next month to act on the findings of this analysis?
a. How will I reassess this content after I have made the adjustments suggested by this analysis?
Techlearning > > DATA: Maximize Your Mining, Part One > April 15, 2005
