Read pages 8-12 of WestEd's Guide to a Comprehensive Needs Assessment. Then answer the questions below.
Choose an element from EQS, your school wide proficiency expectations or transferable skills expectations and find three pieces of data from your class that could help you examine how your students are meeting those expectations.
Do you collect data on your school wide expectations? (content proficiencies and/or transferrable skills)
If yes, locate it and review. Is it quality data? Why or why not? How could you improve the collection process? What is your advice to others who have not started collecting student data on proficiencies?
If no, what have been the barriers to collecting this data? What questions do you have for those already engaged in this process?
review?
Create a survey for graduates of your school union that asks them questions about preparedness for the next steps in their life OR find the data that you are already collecting. Is it quality? Why or why not?
Focused School Union is interested in applying for a private foundation grant that would allow them to develop a portfolio system for their Personalized Learning Plans. The grant requires that the school submit a summary of a needs assessment that includes multiple data sets from multiple sources.
After looking at all its data from standardized tests and their local reporting system, they realize that they have no data collected that specifically addresses the outcomes of the Personalized Learning Plan.
What suggestions do you have for the team? What data could they still collect? Who could they collect it from?
Browse the VT AOE’s website to learn more about statewide processes for Data Collection.
Examine the Center for Collaborative Education’s Model for Assisting Schools & Districts to Effectively Use Data to learn about CCE’s data-based inquiry cycle.
Read page 8 of the Colorado Department of Education’s Guide for Comprehensive Needs Assessment, which has Common Sources of Data for Comprehensive Needs Assessment.
Read this article from the Carnegie Commons Blog on Revisiting the Purposes of Practical Measurement for Improvement: Learning from the BTEN Measurement System.