Strategies for Data-Driven Success in Education

1. Strategies for Data UseEveryone Achieves. No Exceptions. No Excuses. Gillian Williams President The Rensselaerville Institute

2. Three Key Strategies • Diagnosis • Yourself as Sparkplug • Your Program • Helping Students • Aligning Resources

3. What is the thing you most control or can influence in your young peoples’ success?

4. How to Diagnose Yourself • What sparks change? • What keeps change going in the right direction? ALWAYS COMES DOWN TO THE PERSON!

5. Some Sparkplug Characteristics • Energy • Bias to Act • Results Orientation

6. Energy • Stamina and staying power • Enthusiasm and optimism • Passion for achievement • Motivate others with forward momentum

7. Bias To Act • Focus on solutions • Sense of urgency • Opportunity-driven • Impatient

8. Results Orientation • Outcome matters more than process • Need for achievement • Clear and compelling targets for success • Ability to get and use data

9. ENERGY – BIAS TO ACT – RESULTS • Think about what each characteristic “looks like” in you • Be brutally honest • This is not what you want to be – it’s who you are right now

10. Data Use: What Gets In the Way? • Complexity. Too much information is as bad as too little. • Timing. Year-end performance data is not available until after the following school year begins. • Information Export. Collecting data can feel more like a requirement for someone else than a tool for you. • Validation. We look for information that shows progress vs problems – with information as a way to improve. • Disconnect. There’s often a gap between quantities and qualities.

11. How To Diagnose Your Program • Be quick • Be personal • Be honest • Be data-informed

12. What’s Wrong? • ACHIEVEMENT! • What’s trending? • Where are the gaps – gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status? • What’s “beneath” the trends?

13. What’s Your Trajectory?

14. What’s Blocking Success? • External versus Internal • Structural versus (Inter)Personal

15. The Power of Targets

16. 1. What Can You Target? • Academic Achievement • Behavior Change • Quantifiable Results 2. How can data help you do this? 3. What data do you need?

19. ACADEMIC GOAL SETTING - Reading Student: Sage Jefferson Teacher: Lockwood Period: 4 2010 Score: 72%2011 Score: 68% 70% = passing October – Benchmark #1: 54%December – Benchmark #2: 62%February – Benchmark #3: 2012 Target : 410 (75%) Current standards to work on: Main idea – especially the difference between main idea and theme and how to find each of them in fiction. Inferences – remember that this is about what can be figured out from the text – not just what is already written. What will you change now to hit your target? When I am reading I will ask myself what the main idea is as I go along in the reading. When I read at home I will try to read fiction books and look for both the main idea and the theme and write them down in my reader’s journal. I will try to think about what I read more instead of just going back and looking for the sentence that has the right answer. What support would you like? I want to move my seat away from Jeremiah during reading class because we always talk about other stuff. I need a new reading journal because my old one got lost. I want to be in the after school reading club. How can you involve your family and friends in meeting your target? After I read at night I am going to ask my auntie to look at my reading journal. I am going to see if my friends want to go to the library sometimes on the weekends. _______________________ _______________________ _______________________ Student Signature Staff Signature Parent Signature

20. What Can You Do To Help? When you look at this student’s data – what things can you and your program or service do that would further support this student’s targets?

21. Resource Alignment

22. Better Alignment • Start with TARGETS • Get Rid of What Pulls You Back • Re-Position What You Have to Keep • Take Better Aim • Seek Out What’s Missing

23. Be the cafeteria lady Everyone Achieves. No Exceptions. No Excuses.