Are You Data-Driven?
Are you data-driven?
It's a phrase that we hear often in the world of education.Can we use data to inform our instruction? Absolutely! In fact, we not only can, but we often should. After all, we want to do our best to ensure that our instructional decisions are based on substance. However, we must also ensure that the data we use is authentic. In too many cases, data has become synonymous with standardized test results. However, there are much more meaningful sources of data that we can use to inform teaching and learning
.Standards for the Assessment of Reading and Writing covers a lot of important ground in this area. It was prepared by the Joint Task Force on Assessment of the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English. Consider the quote below:
Unlike makers of standardized tests, teachers are in a unique position to engage in valid assessment. Because they are closest to students’ learning, they have the opportunity to make many detailed observations over time. For example, the use of classroom portfolios can reduce the likelihood that a student’s “bad day” performance will unduly influence a teacher’s conclusions about that student’s overall literacy...Teacher knowledge cannot be replaced by standardized tests. Any one-shot assessment procedure cannot capture the depth and breadth of information teachers have available to them.
Are we ensuring that the data we use is valid? Do we examine multiple sources of data over time? Do we value the data we collect every day from being with students and seeing them as living, breathing, unique individuals?
We also need to consider how we communicate different types of data to both students and parents. If we make something a component of our reports, parent-teacher conferences, and so on, it becomes a part of our school culture. We communicate to parents and students that it is something we highly value. Is the data from standardized tests something we highly value? Or do we highly value the data and evidence of learning that our students produce in class, the Approaches to Learning skills we observe them building while learning, the conversations we have with them while conferring, etc? Standardized tests can give only a small picture of what might be happening with a learner, but they cannot capture the wealth of information teachers have available to them each day in the classroom.
Data is certainly an important part of our work. But, is it what drives us? Are we data-driven? Or are we inquiry-driven? Learning-driven? Student-driven? What are our values? How do we communicate those values to students, parents, and our larger community? It's an important conversation for all of us to have.
Again, data is an important part of our work, but it's definitely not the whole. We must recognize that data provides just one piece of the big, messy, imperfect puzzle we live each day in our schools and classrooms. If taken out of context or out of proportion, data can falsely simplify and/or misconstrue reality.
Perhaps we are data-informed, but—hopefully—not data-driven.