Yesterday, I spent about 3 hours working on disaggregating end of year data to give to our staff. I'm placing students reading scores on a scatter graph and also charting the difference between the middle-of-year scores and end-of-year scores so that teachers can see movement. I'm also giving them over-all data, like how many average points each student has changed, what their over-all class average was on this assessment, etc. As I am working on it, I am thinking, "This is really important and could be critical to our students' learning for next year. I wonder if everyone will understand why."
Some teachers might think, "Oh, well, that's last year's stuff. Those kids are gone. I don't need to look at that." But you do--for lots of reasons--but here are the two main reasons.
1) This data tells you where your strengths and weaknesses are as a teacher.
2) The data on the students you will be getting tells you where you need to start with your new class.
Let's look at these reasons a little bit more closely.
As teachers--as humans--we all have areas where we need to grow. If you see that the majority of your class seems to be struggling in one or two areas, that's probably more attributable to you as a teacher rather than all of them as individual students. We can even look at this in broad areas, such as fluency, accuracy, and comprehension. If you have a classroom full of speedy readers, congrats, you are awesome at teaching fluency! I would like to tap into your knowledge of teaching fluency and work with you to help others improve in that area! However, if you notice most of your kiddos are struggling in the area of comprehension then we need to work on that. Luckily, you are not alone, for I am here to help you with that! So is the rest of your team and your administrators. Isn't that awesome? Chances are you have some strengths that you can share with the rest of us as well. This is where that amazing buzz-word "collaboration" comes in. You see, we don't need an administrator to come in, look at your scores and say to you, "You have got to improve in your ability to teach comprehension. Here are a list of workshops you need to go to. I will come in and watch you 45 times in the next three weeks to make sure you are doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing," etc. (That is not how my administrators roll, by the way, but y'all know what I'm talking about!) If you know your data before anyone else does, then working toward correcting the areas where you are struggling is in your hands and no one else's. It leaves you open to be the conversation starter. You can approach your team and say, "How are y'all teaching comprehension? What specific types of questions are you asking? Does anyone have a great lesson for main idea?" etc. We could get a lot more specific and look at student expectations one by one and see exactly where we need to work harder, but for the sake of this post, I think you get the idea. If you are really looking at your own data, more so than anyone else, then you will always be prepared to answer any questions that may be thrown your way. Better yet, you will constantly be improving in those areas if you recognize that you need to. The bottom line is, when one or two kids don't get it, that may be their fault. When the whole class doesn't get it, point the finger back at yourself because there are some changes that need to be made (assuming there's nothing wrong with the test or the way the questions were asked, etc.) You aren't alone though and I, for one, am always happy to help teachers find resources, people to observe, books to read, etc. that will help them grow in areas where it is needed.
Let's talk about the second reason why you need to look at last year's data. This data has some really specific information about your new students. Do I really expect you to take the time to look through the scores of every single one of your new kiddos? Absolutely! Do I realize how much time that might take? Absolutely! I always--always--looked at whatever data was available to me and made it my mission to know as much about each student as possible before school even started. The second I knew my class list, I was in the cumulative folder closet looking at those files. If we had portfolios, even better. Why? This is my starting point. I'm going to forego the argument that kids lose ground over summer. Of course they do (so do I!) but I am looking at the potential starting point--where I know they should be--soon--so that I know where we need to work and where I can help them excel. This is critical. If you can't get your hands on last year's data, start asking everyone you can. Last year's teacher, an instructional specialist, admin, the school secretary, whomever may have that information because it is critical to you. You don't want to find out two months into school that the shy boy in the back is actually reading three grade levels ahead because you've just wasted two months of his time. Likewise, you don't want to find out that you have a potential special education student that no one told you about or that Johnny is supposed to be getting ESL services but no one told your or that Sally is at-risk because she repeated kindergarten. Is someone supposed to tell you those things? Sure! Does it always happen? No! Whose ultimately responsible for these kids? You! So get in there and make it happen.
Here's a little story to go along with my point. My third year as a teacher, I switched school districts to Cypress-Fairbanks ISD outside of Houston and I was teaching first grade at Owens Elementary school. Lovely campus, wonderful staff. I didn't know a single child on the campus and I knew it was critical that I knew my kids. Cy-Fair schools put pictures of the students inside their cumulative folders. As soon as the principal handed out the class lists, I went into the records room, memorized names and faces and any other information I could find out about these kiddos. On Meet the Teacher night, the parents were amazed. I knew all of the kids as they walked in the room. I greeted them by name, shook their hands, made them feel welcome right from the beginning. They were all apprehensive because I was new there and they didn't know me at all from the year before. This set both the students and their parents at ease. The parents were amazed. One mom said, "How did you know who my daughter was?" I told her I had looked at their folders because I was so excited to meet them. From that point on this mother, and many others, new their children were safe, they were going to learn a lot, and they were with a teacher who cared about them immensely because I took the time to know them. Wouldn't that be an amazing way to start your year off as well?
Know your students and you will know exactly what they need to learn just in time. Find out this information from last year's data. It's critical to making sure you are at your best as a teacher and that your students are at their best as well. Besides, who needs to sit on the beach and sip a nice cold drink when you can be pouring through data like me, right? Hello? Anyone? Anyone?
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