Educational leadership tends to emphasize a data-driven culture. Teachers, principals, and district leaders are required to have the skills necessary to understand the data and use the data to inform their decision-making.
Teachers, principals, and district leaders often have data handed to them in reports at the beginning of the school year and they are expected to be able to analyze the data and produce insightful action plans based on the data. Yet, how often do personnel in education get opportunities to practice and learn how to use data in a meaningful way?
It seems like school and district personnel may need more practice and coaching related to understanding data and interpreting data to inform their decisions and practice. One district in California’s central valley provides a model for cultivating a data-driven culture that other districts might find helpful. David and Talbert (2010) profiled the Sanger Unified School District as part of a three-year evaluation funded by the Cowell Foundation. Sanger has over 10,000 students and only 19 schools. While it is small, Sanger’s students have similar characteristics to many urban districts in California: 80% of the students are poor and minority, and about one fourth are English Learners.
David and Talbert point out that at Sanger, “Educators at all levels of the system are expected to make decisions based on data, and are held publicly accountable for doing so” (p. 45). Over the past five years, Sanger has developed something called the “Sanger Summit” where principals are expected to present to the central office leaders data from their school from the previous year, as well as specific strategies for how they plan to improve student and teacher performance in the current year to improve outcomes exemplified in their data.
Instead of setting unrealistic expectations for the Summit, the Sanger district administrators started small by asking principals to only present the three prior years of API data for their schools. The principals had no formal professional development on how to do this, so at first the quality of their presentations varied quite a bit. Every year the district administrators increased the expectations, asking principals to explain the data by subgroup and present more ideas on their analysis of the data. Principals would learn through observing each other, asking questions, and strategic coaching they received from “The Head Table” watching the presentation that usually consisted of a handful of district administrators.
These Summits may seem like more of a publicity stunt with their Powerpoint presentations and their attendance open to the public. Interestingly, they have become a vehicle for the district to build the capacity of their principals and administrators to be able to understand, interpret and analyze the data. I wonder what forums or structures other districts have where personnel have a chance to practice using data to drive their decisions and receive coaching that supports this skill over time.
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David, J. L. and Talbert, J.E. (November 2010) “Turning Around a High-Poverty school District: Learning from Sanger Unified’s Success.” An external evaluation commissioned by S.H. Cowell Foundation. Retrieved on October 13, 2001 from http://www.stanford.edu/group/suse-crc/cgi-bin/drupal/sites/default/files/Sanger-Report.pdf
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