Why Schools Should Consider Adopting a Data-Driven Culture Now More than Ever

Start With Data-Driven Decision Making

I heard it all the time when I was an undergrad: Be a “data-driven decision maker.” No matter how important it is to be fluent in student data, however, the minute people start throwing around “data” as a buzzword, it becomes all too easy to tune out. This is a huge flaw in the education field and an overall disservice to students because collecting, analyzing, and taking action on data is one of the most potent strategies we have to increase student achievement and growth. Data-driven decision making in education has to be a core focus of your overall strategy for continuous improvement. During the COVID-19 pandemic, varying models for delivering instruction—including hybrid education—were brought into the mainstream. As we prepare for the 2021/22 school year, the strategic use of high-quality student data and data-based decision making in education will be more important than ever in order to overcome the unfinished learning resulting from those closures.

Making data-driven decisions means focusing on quality over quantity

The pandemic. School closures. A sudden shift to online and hybrid education models. Over the last year, it often felt like the world was all noise and no signal. Data is the signal—the homing beacon. When schools make a conscious decision to commit to a data-driven decision–making model, they can take steps to cut through the noise. What is left is a consistent, meaningful focus on goals for student learning. In the absence of such an approach, “it’s all too easy to base decisions on opinion, assumption, or anecdotal evidence.”

Whenever I’m asked about data-driven decision making, one of my go-to mantras is that we need to be considerate about what data we’re using and how we plan to use it. The danger of being a DRIP, or “data rich and information poor,” in education is real. As a member of one faculty pointed out¹, they had become very good at identifying student strengths and weaknesses via data, but not why students were strong or weak or how to effectively re-teach concepts. They decided to create their own more meaningful assessments that allowed for data collection and analysis “by student, standard, and question²,” which was much more useful for them as a team. In an online or hybrid education environment, the ability to drill down into useful data, not just data for data’s sake, is critical. In other words, better data drives better decision making.

Collecting meaningful data is easier than ever before

Twenty or thirty years ago, data collection looked a lot different. We had access to state-processed standardized testing data, and we could collect and hand-tally paper-and-pencil assessments. But we had neither the time nor the technology we needed to use today’s data to drive the next day’s instruction. Just think of how things have changed in education, particularly over the last ten years.

In the past, conducting a true item analysis on a formative quiz or summative exam was an incredibly time-consuming process. Today, teachers can assign an assessment through the school’s learning management system (LMS) platform and get data from the assessment in real time as students complete it. Even better, teachers can issue common assessments via the LMS and collaborate in real time on what items should be thrown out, re-taught, or reassessed. We can also use that data to inform our conversations with students and their families. When used correctly and in a timely manner, this aspect of a data-driven culture alone makes teaching so much more effective than the old way of doing things. Rather than hoping (but not knowing for sure) that your students have learned the content before moving on, new methods of collecting meaningful data help give you some certainty.

Data helps you “see” every student every day

In a virtual-only or hybrid education model, you might not physically see every student every day. Even if you do, you know that the online or hybrid environments present challenges—both technical and otherwise—that you might not experience in a more traditional delivery model. Data collection and analysis can help solve those problems.

For example, let’s say you have a student who was supposed to join a live video conference lesson on a given day. They didn’t, for whatever reason, but they logged into the LMS, watched your pre-recorded lesson, completed classwork, and filled out an exit ticket. Even though they didn’t attend class that day, at least you still got to “see” them and have some data as to whether or not they understood and mastered the day’s content. There’s still some legwork involved in tracking that student down and helping them attend synchronous content delivery, but it’s a lot better than the old days when an absence results in several days of follow-up.

In a perfect world, “seeing” a student every day translates across all of your applications. In PowerSchool’s classroom products, the LMS, assessment management system, student information system, and other applications are interoperable. The data moves seamlessly and securely between them, so students, families, and school professionals are all on the same page. This means you get to see all your students, parents and guardians get to see their students, and students can see themselves! Data-driven decision making isn’t just for teachers. It’s for students and families, too. That’s powerful stuff.

The data doesn’t lie

We’ve always known that there’s more to attendance than simply “being present.” Distance learning has certainly brought this concept into a new light. Whether it’s attending a Zoom lesson but leaving the camera off or logging in for the first few minutes of a video conference and then suddenly “having trouble with their connection,” remote learning gives students plenty of room to game their attendance. That’s why it’s important to have data that show outcomes.

Students, like flowing water, gravitate toward the path of least resistance. It’s one of the reasons why I love high schoolers so much! Good data helps you hold students accountable. More importantly, good data helps students hold themselves accountable. We can nurture this accountability by holding individual goal-setting meetings with our students and help them reconnect with those goals at regular intervals throughout the course. We can record and track those goals in the learning management system and make them visible to all the right stakeholders through an interoperable system. When we do that, students can see for themselves how their progress and performance are impacted by the choices they make. Again, their decisions are driven by their data.

Data helps simplify the challenges

When considering the unique circumstances schools have faced in online and hybrid education formats, there has never been a better time to beef up your school’s data-driven culture. When you adopt and, more importantly, work to define and refine the process of data-driven decision making at your school, you help simplify the seemingly massive challenges your school faces. Without such a system, the temptation is to fall back on old habits, like making decisions based on gut instinct and anecdotal evidence. When you adopt a culture of data-driven decision making, you eliminate uncertainty around what students know and are really learning. And you stay laser–focused on both your strategic goals and the learning goals set by the students themselves.

Resources

1. Crites, E. (2016, October 4). 7 steps to becoming a data-driven school. Edutopia.
   https://www.edutopia.org/blog/7-steps-becoming-data-driven-school-eric-crites
2. Ibid.