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Mining the data: School successfully uses data to direct instruction
MATTHEWS, Mo. — When Angie Hanlin became principal at Matthews Elementary School in Matthews, she knew she had challenges ahead.
For the previous three years, test scores for Matthews Elementary students in reading and math had declined. As Hanlin searched for a way to turn those numbers around, she turned to the data that Matthews Elementary collects on students.
It just wasn’t the collection of data that Hanlin studied but also how to use the information to determine what students knew, what they should know and how instructors could help meet their academic needs. The re-interpretation of data has helped Hanlin and her staff improve student performance at the small rural school.
“I do want to throw out we are not perfect and we aren’t exactly where we hope to be, but we have made huge gains,” said Hanlin. “The first year when I got here, the prior year’s scores showed 9 percent of the student population was at or above grade level in math and less than 20 percent in reading. The spring of 2017 we ended the year with 72 percent of the population at the 50th percentile or higher in reading and 77 percent of the school population at or above the 50th percentile in mathematics.”
To bring about the turn-around, Hanlin and the Matthews pre-kindergarten through fifth grade teachers created a data room, a small room with its walls lined with file cards. There is a card for every student at the school.
Each week, the school’s intervention teachers note student progress toward their individual benchmarks. Every four to six weeks, the student’s data is reviewed by a team.
The Matthews staff has learned how to dig through the data.
“We look at where the student’s data points are and if they are at or above that target,” Hanlin explained. “We know if that student is on target to close the gap. And at anytime if we see a student is not on target to close that gap we meet and decide what we need to do.”
Hanlin emphasized it is not simply demanding a student do more. Instead, she explained, the team works to develop a plan on what needs to be changed to enable the student to reach the skill level needed. Sometimes it is providing more time with a student; other times it is presenting information in a different way.
Describing it as differentiated instruction, Hanlin explained instruction is tailored for each specific learner.
“It does not mean that I’m assigning three different assignments, but it does mean that the way I am presenting that information and that skill to these students around my small group reading table is in a different manner than I would to a different group of students,” she said.
It isn’t just for those students below level. Hanlin said the staff uses intervention for those at or above grade level as well.
“We can’t allow those students to coast. I’m still going to get targeted, explicit, direct instruction that I need to push them even further. So it is truly meeting the students’ needs,” she said.
The school principal acknowledged that data-driven differentiated instruction can sound intimidating to classroom teachers initially. She said the question she gets from teachers is: What do I do about the other 15 students in my class while I’m working with five at my small group table?
Matthews kindergarten teacher Ashley Palmer said it has changed the way she spends her time in the classroom. Typically she divides her students into small groups based on their mastery of a skill.
“You may have three kids with a deficit in an area, that you are doing one activity for them but you may be doing a totally different activity for the same area with some of your other kids,” she said.
“I know we are headed in the right direction. In my mind our model is that data is driving the school bus. It guides our decision making. Our data now guides the professional development that we give to teachers. Our data guides the instruction that the teachers provide. Our data truly guides our academic discussions and the professional discussions that we have,” said Hanlin.
Dr. Sam Duncan, New Madrid County R-1 superintendent, was among the first to notice the turn-around at the school. He encouraged Hanlin and her staff to share their data-driven instruction techniques with the district’s other two elementary schools. Also the Middle School and the Central High School have added new assessment tools to track literacy.
“It has now become a process used across the district. We want the best data we can get on student literacy and numeracy, then the next question is what does the research say is the best way to help the students,” said Duncan. “Then we implement that with fidelity and share those best practices across the district.”
Duncan praised the teachers’ hard work and said he hopes to see it reflected in the 2018 Missouri assessment test scores. But more important than test scores, he emphasized, is the increased skills for the students.
“Our target is students who can read and read well, not half-read but read,” Duncan said. “If they can read well, they can do math problems and succeed in other areas of their lives.”
New Madrid Principal Toni Taylor-Lawfield, said the data along with the weekly and bi-weekly monitoring enables teachers to closely track what they need to work on with the students. She also praised the effort by the teachers at the district’s schools to share ideas on what works in the classroom as they collaborate on improving educational opportunities.
“I think it is really beneficial to our students and teachers. It helps us all to learn — no one is ever done learning — we are learning as we go,” Taylor-Lawfield said. “With the data, they see it in black and white. The parents get to see it. The kids see It. I really do see a big difference.”
After visiting Matthews Elementary School and watching the school staff use the data to address the needs of individual students and plan their instruction, Southeast Missouri State University’s Regional Professional Development Center’s Dr. Ken Jackson urged them to share it on the state level. Earlier this month, Hanlin, Palmer and others from the school spoke at the Federal Programs Conference. Later in October they will give another presentation as part of an education publisher’s presentation (see sidebar).
Data-based instruction is a huge hot topic in education, Palmer and Hanlin agreed.
Many of those at the conference have found themselves in a similar situation of seeing test scores slide, Palmer said. “A lot of people have good data; they just don’t know how to use it,” she added.
Making the turn-around takes time and effort, cautioned Hanlin.
“We shared at the conference that our numbers are not as high as we want them to go,” she said. “But we are so confident in the structure, the system and the strategies that we are using, that we feel like we are just getting started.”