Changing How Data is Used to Boost Student Test Scores

One night, Emily came home from work worried and with a bag filled with papers. Mark asked what she was worried about, and their conversation began about her despair over helping her students pass the state-standardized test, an accomplishment she felt her job hinged on. She had this pile of papers with test scores and data, and she simply didn’t know how to use it to her advantage.

The Goshen school board, superintendent and principals were very clear – get your students to pass the test!

Emily takes a huge amount of ownership for her students’ test scores. Describing the content of this information, she exclaimed, “I have all this paper. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know how to organize it. I don’t do anything with it. They bring it to me, they tell me what it means, I put it in a folder and I slide my filing cabinet shut in case they ask me to get it back out again. That’s the end.”

Mark – who sits in district budget meetings – took a step back and thought about the tens of thousands of dollars his district spends on diagnostic tests, demographics tools and information systems. Mark considered the stack of paper teachers might be reading to perhaps learn what they already knew – one student was accelerated and another student was not. He reflected on the $18-per-student cost for the district’s most recent test. It was clear, something had to be done.

Did that stack of paper get Emily’s students any closer to passing the test? As Mark puts it, “Did Emily get a bunch little people who she had control over for one hour a day to do something for her on another day. That’s an outrageous expectation.”

Mark dug in to the situation, and learned, “There’s a great divide between administrators who have the information – and teachers who need this information.” Administrators are in an office, have the time to analyze data, understand what the information means, and know how to take action. Teachers are accountable for what the information means, should be taking action on it – but are busy non-stop in the classroom, with extra-curricular activities and grading assignments.

Mark and Emily sorted through the big stack of paper containing dozens of test results from a variety of sources. He asked her, “What if I could extract five or six data elements, connect them, put them in a row, for this school year and past years. Would you have a better feel for if students were getting where they needed to go, to pass the test, to succeed at a higher level than previous year scores to show the value-add, all the little things that go into that process?”

Emily said profoundly, “YES!”

DataMap completely changed the scope by which teachers and administrators view all the testing and achievement information. Numbers stopped being numbers, and started being action points and directions – a map. Without DataMap, Goshen administrators and teachers knew which students were having problems. With DataMap they take action!

For six year, Goshen had been two or three indicator points shy of an EXCELLENT rating. After using DataMap for one year, in 2009, the district attained an EXCELLENT rating with students passing every single test, one of them at an 80% passage rate. The district made AYP and value-added! Mark and district administrators attribute their success to DataMap.