Data 4 Student Success the Michigan Data project

Data 4 Student Success the Michigan Data project

I am in Lansing today and tomorrow for a Data 4SS Conference. This conference has been put on by Calhoun ISD and money from the MDE. They have put on a great program so far.

I attended the work shop called “Beyond Achievement Data” This session started out talking about a model called “The Data Wheel” this model looks like 3 gears that are interconnected. The first set of gear driving the system is called the Process Data, the next gear being driven is the Perception Data and the third is the output gear called the Results Data. Lets first look at what is entailed in the Process Data - This is defined in the handout by who, what, when, and where types of information. Example of this are a lesson plan an assessment test formative or sumative. Next their is the Perception Data: This is data that is based on what people believe is true. Also this is called soft data as no one can put a finger on any data that drives there opinion. This data is often over look and under utilized in survey on Student and parent survey instruction practices. The third component of this model is the Results Data: This is what is produced by the students after instruction has occurred. This takes the form of MEAP, Merit, SAT/ACT, and Drop-out rate. Some of the other actives that we preformed were creating a mental model of student learning for your teaching practice and for your district and any other organizations that effect student learning. There was also a Jigsaw activity were three different groups in a table of 6 to 9 people read 1/3 of a paper then each group reports back on the big ideas from what they learned in there section of the paper. The article was on different form of data and how when you look at only one factor you may not see the whole picture and then as you add more layers of data on top of this you way find you have a complete answer to a question. As you get past for levels of data it gets harder to analyze but you will have a more complete picture of the data. This was a good workshop session and allowed me to think at a deeper level how we can use student data to drive and enhance student learning.
The second session of the day was on Professional Learning Community (PLC) and how they play a very important roll in creating a safe environment so that so that teachers can work collaboratively on analyzing student data. When creating a PLC organization you need to set norms that the group will operate by another name for norms might be ground rules or group rules there are many more names that this can be called. Many PLC groups have norms but fewer know what to-do if someone in the group doesn’t follow the norms. Some suggestion would be to take a break in the meeting and take the person off to the side and tell them of there error if they would continue to not follow the rules they may need to be ask to not join in the group discussion. There is a four part process when creating norms. Create them practice them in a collaborative group some times if there is problems in the group with the norms or lack of a norm the group may need to reform these norms.

This project is coordinated through Michigan's educational service agencies (ISDs/RESAs/RESDs) for use by these agencies and the local public schools they serve. This Title IID grant provided funding to enable the creation of a Professional Development Model designed to foster school improvement planning around quality data and inquiry relating to student work. This grant has also provided funding to build a Dynamic Inquiry tool that helps educators analyze state level data to use in the school improvement planning process.

I would like to take this time to publicly thank the Leadership team of the Data for Student Success for all there hard work in setting up this training days.

Data4SS Leadership Team:
Steve Brodeur, Project Integrator - Data for Student Success
Mary Gehrig, Assistant Superintendent - Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment
Andrew Henry, Executive Director - Data for Student Success
Mike Oswalt, Assistant Superintendent - Regional Technology Services
Rebecca Rocho, Assistant Superintendent - General Services and Legislation
Maureen Slamer, Director of Professional Development - Data for Student Success