Data Resources
Analyzing Student Level Disciplinary Data: A guide for districts
"Federal guidance from the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (2014) recommends that districts examine those data and review their disciplinary policies to determine the extent to which exclusionary disciplinary actions are being used and whether they are being administered disproportionately to subgroups of students, such as racial/ethnic minority students or students with disabilities."
"This report, conducted in collaboration with the US Department of Education and Urban School Improvement Alliance, provides information on how to conduct such an examination and explores differences in student academic outcomes across the types of disciplinary actions that students receive. It serves as a blueprint to assist districts with designing and carrying out their own analyses and engaging with external researchers who are doing the same."
Using Data for Progress Monitoring
The following archived webinars sponsored by the National Center on Intensive Intervention (NCII) are free and provide information about using data for “Progress Monitoring”:
Essential Components of RTI: Progress Monitoring
In this webinar from the Center on RTI at American Institutes for Research, Ms. Whitney Donaldson provides an overview of progress monitoring, why it is important and how to use progress monitoring data to make data based decisions.
Using Academic Progress Monitoring for Individualized Instructional Planning
In this webinar from NCII, Dr. Rebecca Zumeta discusses various approaches to progress monitoring, focusing on the value and implications of using progress monitoring to track the growth of students with intensive academic needs. The webinar provides a step by step walk through of the process for using progress monitoring data to make instructional decisions for individual students and provides student level examples.
Monitoring Student Progress for Behavioral Interventions
In this webinar from NCII, Dr. Daniel Maggin, Assistant Professor of Special Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, discusses how to measure behavior systematically. Dr. Maggin shares methods for collecting behavioral data, procedures for examining behavioral data, and discusses using behavioral progress monitoring to make programming decisions. Within those areas he focuses on (a) defining progress monitoring, (b) methods available for progress monitoring, including but not limited to Direct Behavior Rating (DBR), and (c) ways to examine progress monitoring data and make decisions about instruction and behavioral interventions.
Sharing Data Effectively Across Schools and Families
The following resources come from the Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP), which addresses "issues of access and equity in learning, and advancing family and community engagement practices that reinforce success for all children" (http://www.hfrp.org/).
Tips for Administrators, Teachers, and Families: How to Share Data Effectively
Effective family engagement strategies include providing families with accessible, understandable, and actionable data on their child’s progress. This set of tip sheets helps administrators, teachers, and families determine the best ways to share student data in meaningful ways, on a regular basis, to strengthen family–school partnerships and promote student learning. The tip sheets include examples of data-sharing practices that illustrate how administrators, teachers, and families can adopt a data-driven approach to supporting student learning. Designed to be used either individually or as a set, the tip sheets allow educators and families to approach conversations about student data with shared expectations about what each of them is prepared to discuss. This understanding helps increase their ability to work together to improve children’s educational outcomes.
Parent–Teacher Conference Tip Sheets
Even with technological advances that allow parents to track their child’s academic progress remotely, and more transparency in student data (such as test scores and attendance rates), face-to-face interaction between parents and teachers is still the cornerstone of school family engagement efforts. The Harvard Family Research Project has developed these newly revised Parent–Teacher Conference Tip Sheets that provide key strategies for both parents and teachers to walk into conferences informed and prepared, in order to ensure the most successful outcomes. A tip sheet aimed at school principals also outlines how school administrators can support parents and teachers to that end. These tip sheets are also available in Spanish.
The Ten Principles to Guide Use of Student Data
Over 30 organizations have worked together to create a list of ten principles that should be used by school officials to protect and guide the use of students' personal information. This article includes the ten principles and supportive information for schools on the topic of school data being utilized to improve teaching and learning.
Requirement for teachers data proficiency sparks controversy
A new policy brief has sparked controversy over whether or not teachers should be required to prove data proficiency as part of their licensure. Proponents say it will ensure student achievement; opponents say it's a premature move based on not-yet-there data systems. The report, "Teacher Data Literacy: It's About Time," produced by the Data Quality Campaign (DQC) with support from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE), the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), says that state and federal policies have not gone far enough to promote the skills teachers needs to be data literate.