Using Data to Improve Student Achievement

1 Using data to ImproveStudent AchievementKatie Lynn AppelUniversity of DaytonFall 2007 References Bernhardt, (2005). data tools for school improvement. Educational Leadership,62(5), 66-69. Brozo, & Hargis, C. (2003). Using low-stakes reading assessment. EducationalLeadership, 61(3), 60-64. Guskey, T. R. (2003). How classroom assessments Improve learning. EducationalLeadership, 6(5), 6-11. Pedulla, (2003). State-mandated testing: What do teachers think? EducationalLeadership, 61(3), 42-46. Safer, N. & Fleischman, S. (2005). How Student progress monitoring improves Leadership, 62(5), 81-82. Sharkey, & Murnane, R. J. (2003). Learning from Student assessment Leadership, 61(3), Assessments Large scale assessments are designed for a specific used in most states are designed to rank-order schoolsand students for the purposes of accountability.

2 Assessments designed for ranking are generally not goodinstruments for helping teachers Improve instruction or modifytheir approach to individual students for the following reasons: Assessments typically are given to students wheninstructional activities are near completion. Teachers don t receive the results until two or three that time students have moved on to newteachers. Results that teachers receive usually lack the level of detailneeded to target specific who develop usefulassessments, provide correctiveinstruction and give students secondchances to demonstrate success canimprove their instruction and helpstudents R. Guskey When students are given assessments that fail toalign with the experiences in the classroom they areoften left to feel like their hard work and effortsdon t pay off in school because the time and effortthat they spent studying had little or no influence onthe results and they also lose trust in their teacher.

3 Classroom assessments that serve as meaningfulpieces of information don t surprise , it allows for reflection of the concepts andskills that the teacher emphasized in class. Teachers can help students understand importantfeedback for Assessments UsefulFor StudentsMake Assessments UsefulFor Teachers Classroom assessments should serve as ameaningful source of information for teachers,helping them identify what was taught well andwhat they need to work on. Teachers must be able to determine whether theassessment(s) adequately addresses theknowledge, understanding, or skill that they wereintended to measure (Guskey, 2003). If teachers find no obvious problems with theassessment, then they must turn their attention totheir own Assessments withCorrective Instruction Assessments can be meaningful for students andteachers, but they don t mark the end of teaching.

4 Assessments must be followed by high-quality,corrective instruction designed to remedy whateverlearning errors the assessment identified. Teachers must use approaches that accommodatedifferences in students learning styles andintelligences. Teachers need to see their assessments as anintegral part of the instruction process and ascrucial for helping students Chances toDemonstrate Success Assessments cannot be a one-shot, do-or-die experience forstudents. A second chance helps determine the effectiveness of thecorrective instruction and offers students another opportunityto experience success in learning. Some teachers have expressed concerns that giving studentsa second chance might be unfair and that life isn t like that. However, all educators strive to have their students becomelifelong learners and develop learning-to-learn better learning-to-learn skill is therethan learning from one s mistakes?

5 Assessment for Learning Stiggins (2002) complains that standardized assessments oflearning are increasingly being used to place blame, dole outpunishment and rewards, and threaten students and teachersto increase effort. By contrast, assessment for learning is designed to helpteachers craft more responsive curriculums that facilitateprogress for all students . Using tests to determine students reading ability levels andmatch them with the most appropriate instructional andrecreational reading materials is more likely to promotelearning than is Using assessment to make placement andgrouping decisions, establish a school or district performancerating, or index a teacher merit pay to Student Progress MonitoringIn today s education climate, schoolsuccess is defined as ensuringachievement for every Student .

6 To reachthis goal, educators need tools to helpthem identify students who are at riskacademically and adjust instructionalstrategies to better meet these students Safer and Steve FleischmanWhat is Progress Monitoring? Student progress monitoring is a practice that helps teachersuse Student performance data to continually evaluate theeffectiveness of their teaching and make more informedinstructional decisions. The teacher determines a students current performance levelon skills that the Student will be learning, identifiesachievement goals that the Student needs to reach by theend of the year, and establishes the rate of progress thestudent must make to meet those goals. The teacher then measures the Student s academic progressregularly (weekly, biweekly, or monthly) Using probes.

7 Each probe samples the entire range of skills that the studentmust learn by the end of the year, rather than just theparticular skills a teacher may be teaching that week Measurement MonitoringMastery Measurement Tells teachers whether thestudent has learned theparticular skills covered in Monitoring Tells teacher whether thestudent is learning at apace that will allow him orher to meet learning goalsby the end of the year. If the rate at which aparticular Student is learningseems insufficient, theteacher can Student Progress The teacher graphs a trajectory line between the Student sinitial level of performance on a specific skill and the end-yeargoal. Then the Student plots the level of performance as eachprobe is administered. After noting the pattern of progress, the teacher can adjustinstruction to Improve Student learning.

8 If a Student s performance falls below the line, the teachermay use more intense instruction (in small groups or one-on-one), re-teach the material, or provide additionalopportunities for the Student to practice certain Student Progress Developing probes for frequentmeasurement for each grade level can bea daunting task for schools. Many schools turn to commercially availableproducts, which are web-based and canautomatically graph the progress ofindividual students . Information about resources and tools canbe found at Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills The Dynamic Indicators of Basic EarlyLiteracy Skills (DIBELS) are a set ofstandardized, individually administeredmeasures of early literacy skills. Designed to be one minute fluencymeasures used to monitor thedevelopment of early reading skills.

9 The measures were developed upon theessential early literacy domainsdiscussed in both the National ReadingPanel (2000) and National ResearchCouncil (1998) reports to assess studentdevelopment of: Phonological Awareness Alphabetic Principle Reading Fluency The following is a graphicalrepresentation of the measures that areassessed in first grade. Beginning of Year Week 3-6 Middle 1 of Year Week 12-15 Middle 2 of Year Week 22-24 End of Year Week 32-34 PSF PSF<10 10<=PSF<35 PSF>=35 PSF<10 10<=PSF<35 PSF>=35 PSF<10 10<=PSF<35 PSF>=35 PSF<10 10<=PSF<35 PSF>=35 NWF NWF<13 13<=NWF<24 NWF>=2 4 NWF<24 24<=NWF<41 NWF>=4 1 NWF<30 30<=NWF<50 NWF>=5 0 NWF<30 30<=NWF<50 NWF>=5 0 ORF Not Assessed Yet ORF<4 4<=ORF<13 ORF>=1 3 ORF<11 11<=ORF<25 ORF>=2 5 ORF<20 20<=ORF<40 ORF>=4 0 PSF Phoneme Segmentation Fluency NWF Non-Sense Word Fluency ORF Oral Reading Fluency Deficit Emerging Established Individual Student GraphPhoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF)This graph is a sample of astudent s individual graph forPhoneme Segmentation child s first score is in yellow.

10 Atrajectory line is drawn from theirinitial score to where they need tobe by the end of the year. Theend-year score for PSF is 35. Thechild colors their score after eachprogress monitoring and attemptsto stay above the trajectory particular Student was able tostay above the trajectory line aftereach progress monitoring. ByJanuary this child was even abovegraph Student GraphNon-Sense Word Fluency (NWF)This graph shows a Student sprogress from the beginning of theyear until the end of the this child stayed abovethe trajectory line during the firsthalf of the year, scores wereinconsistent. From 10-27 to 11-11this child made tremendousgrowth. However, from 11-11 to 12-15 the child went down. At thispoint the teacher can determine ifa child requires additionalinstruction or change of Student GraphOral Reading Fluency (ORF)Oral Reading Fluency in First Gradeis not officially assessed until thebeginning of January.