Search This Blog

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Superintendent’s Blog

Bedford Public Schools

Data Wise

As we all know, teachers have always used data.  Whether it’s a test, quiz, writing assessment, project or asking students questions to check for understanding, using data has always been an important part of teaching and learning.  By using various forms of data, teachers can get a better understanding if they need to re-teach a concept, present it in a different way, or if our students can move on to a more complex concept, or new material.  

Within the realm of data and its use in informing instruction, a lot has been researched, and learned over the past few years.  The work by Boudette, City and Murnane in their book, Data Wise:  A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching and Learning (2013), from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, is in many ways a very clear outline as to how and why schools should use data to inform our instruction.  In September of 2019 here in Bedford, as a K-12 curriculum leadership team (program administrators, program directors, principals, central office administrators, and curriculum coordinators) we began the work of diving into the “Data Wise” process.  

The first part of our process was to look closely at our District-Wide Strategic Objects, which outline several objectives all of which connect closely to the Data Wise work, but the one we focused on most in relation to this work was :

“Collaborative Professional Culture:  Nurture a professional culture that maximizes administrator and teaching learning, innovative and creativity by creating authentic opportunities for collaborative work that is informed by shared goal-setting, and analysis of student work and achievement data.”

The Data Wise process itself presents a clear and carefully tested blueprint for school leaders.  It shows how examining text scores and other classroom data (other classroom data is equally as important as standardized tests, if not more important) can become a catalyst for important schoolwide conversations that will enhance schools’ abilities to capture teachers’ knowledge, foster collaboration, identify obstacles to change, and enhance school culture and climate.

As a K-12 curriculum leadership team, we focused on improving teaching and learning by using data structures to discuss, and create meaningful assessments, to form teams to gather the data, analyze the data and inform our teaching, and continue to do this as an ongoing process.  During our work as a K-12 curriculum leadership team we focused on preparing for this work in September 2019, which included reading the first chapters of Data Wise, and continued in November with learning about how to look at data and inquiring within our schools.  In February we began to dig into ways we could act and create data structures to help inform instruction, and in April we began to set up the structure that we would implement during the 2020-21 school year.  Finishing up the year, having read, discussed and implemented, Data Wise:  A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching and Learning (2013).

We were fortunate in many ways in regard to timing. As we began this process of learning about systemic ways to use data within the K-12 landscape in Bedford to inform our instruction, we had no idea how important it would be to have these structures in place.  When the pandemic occurred in March of 2020, we pivoted to remote learning, and then in the fall of 2020 began our hybrid and all remote models.  I can’t say how appreciative and impressed I have been with the implementation of the data work during the school year.  It was vital that we have a data system in place during the past year.  

In September and October we were able to take baseline data in literacy and math, to find out where students were within their learning and understanding of grade level standards, K-12.  In the fall after those assessments were completed we met at grade levels throughout the district to analyze the student data and create plans to adjust our curriculum and instruction, and to provide Rti (Response to Intervention) support to students.  During January and February, we as a system, again utilized student assessments to capture students’ understanding and learning during the several months they were in school.  We continued the process of analysis and intervention.  This spring we will do this again, and I believe, will be able to see that with the use of the Data Wise system, we have been able to adjust our teaching to help students make progress that is meaningful and will help them bridge what has been a difficult year, to September 2021.  

Without the ability to utilize a K-12 data system to capture what students know and are able to do, in relation to their learning, it would have been difficult this school year to understand how much learning might have been lost during the pandemic, how we could adjust our teaching to address learning gaps, or loss during the 2020-21 school year, and where we need to focus coming into the fall of 2021.  Again, I want to thank the faculty and staff in Bedford, for their dedication to making this system be meaningful for our students, and also I want to thank the students for persevering and doing their best.  We will continue to utilize the Data Wise system as we move forward in the coming years.  The goal over time is to learn from students how our teaching can be improved to meet their needs, and help them reach their fullest potential.

Tricia Clifford, Ed. D.
Assistant Superintendent