Structures to Support Effective Data Use

The human structures are the most essential element to high capacity data use. Carefully building a culture of trust where teams or groups of teachers take collective responsibility for their students' learning is where leadership needs to put it's energy and planning. Collaboration, the kind that can drive inquiry doesn't just happen. It does require knowledgeable facilitation or we can fall into the trap of many –we can make the data line-up to support what we already believe. Learning how to ask the right questions and check assumptions with data is at the heart of effective data use. And this kind of data use requires that good research becomes part of the data.

Right up there with need for the human structures is the need for a "structured process" for analyzing the data. In working with data leaders from several districts around the country who were nominated to participate in a project led by APQC in Houston, one of key elements of their successful interrogation of the data, was giving the teacher teams a structured process or protocol for analyzing the data. Having the data and being in a room with a group of colleagues wasn't sufficient for helping them them become open, for helping them make objective observations about what they saw in the data, or for helping them have reflective dialogue about what the data meant. Leadership can assist the process by always urging the data team to consider "what are the implications of what we've just learned from this data"? What further data do we need? Who needs to know this?

When teachers have the opportunity to begin asking the questions relative to "what are we doing well", what's working, what isn't working, who is learning, who isn't, the data structures themselves will become apparent and most of the data they've been overwhelmed by, will come into play. They will become more critical consumers of the data especially benchmark assessments and common assessments. This is when it gets real!

In terms of building the human structures or human capacity for analyzing the data, what have been your biggest challenges? Or your successes? Are there teams of teachers using their data well? How?

Do your teachers a process or protocol for analyzing the data? A structure?

Share your thoughts on Twitter - make sure to include our hash tag #edcmdata at the end of your tweet!