Assignment: Making Decisions for Data Driven Change-Field Experience: Data Gathering and Interviews
The purpose of this experience is for candidates to locate and identify various types of data collected in your school that are used to make programmatic decisions that enhance student learning. Candidates will additionally analyze how the school connects data to educational decisions for quality and adequacy.
Identify a current school improvement or reform effort taking place in your school (such as the implementation of a new balanced literacy program or inclusion). Contact your site administrator and request an interview to discuss this program. Use this interview to learn what types of data were used to make professional development and instructional improvement decisions. If this information is available at a different level of the organization, ask to be put in contact with these key people to assist you with this assignment.
The focus of this interview should be on a specific school improvement or reform effort in which the school is currently engaged. Information that you gather should include:
- The specific school improvement or reform effort
- Students, grades, or subject areas impacted
- Why this reform was needed
- Types of data used to assess this need and why
- Stakeholders involved in the decision-making process and how
- How reform effort is being monitored
- Types of data that will be collected to evaluate results
After conducting your interview, identify the types of data collected and analyze them for quality and adequacy regarding program outcomes. You will prepare a paper that describes the information gathered in relationship to your assessment of its effectiveness. Also determine what other data were available that could have been used and why. You are to use readings to assist in making scholarly decisions.