Data Days

After each benchmark assessment, our school prioritizes having data days where classroom teachers, interventionists, and the instructional coach analyze data and determine next steps for our students. We intentionally focus on our historically undeserved students, students who are emergent bilinguals and our students who receive Special Education services.  

Our administrator gives each grade level team protected time to review student assessment and analyze the data, (below there are a few of the  assessment reports we use), to reflect on our instruction as well as determine next steps for our students, (III.ii.a., III.ii.c., III.ii.d.).  Classroom teachers, the instructional coach, interventionists, ESL teachers, and SPED teachers are a part of these four hour data day meetings.  As the instructional coach, I facilitate the conversations and keep us focused on the task at hand.  We use a protocol, see above, to follow and analyze our benchmark assessment data where we intentionally focus on specific student groups such as our historically undeserved students, students who are English Language Learners and students who receive Special Education services, (III.iii.c).    Once we comb through the data and determine how each student is progressing, and determine if the assessment data is reflective of each student, we utilize our district math decision rules and dive into an action plan for supporting our students, (both located above). We plan specifically for students  who need tier 2 supports, tier 3 supports, and how to continue to engage our students who are meeting and exceeding. We discuss what strategies can support students and look at upcoming lessons and units, sometimes leading to a separate meeting where we would unpack a unit, (III.v.b.). After our data days, teachers communicate with families to engage them in conversation about their child's progress and I  share all of our findings, patterns, celebrations, and problems of practice with our administrative team, (III.vi.).  Our staff really appreciates these data days and as a school we believe that it helps move our instruction and therefore leads to increase student achievement.  

Data days are really important to me and I think our school is lucky to have an administration team that values this work.  The meetings support our district's Instructional Framework and are data driven with data from various assessments, disaggregated by race and students in special programming, to improve teaching and student learning. It is sometimes difficult to talk about our students' data because it is a reflection of our teaching, but the teachers are extremely professional and vulnerable during these meetings and it allows us to think about our instructional practices and each student individually.  I think this can happen because of the environment I have helped create where student learning is at the center of all we do, ( III.v.d., III.v.e.).   I am proud of data days and feel like it has allowed my colleagues to grow and reflect on their instruction, it keeps students at the heart of our conversation, and it has helped me learn to facilitate discussion and analyze data that may be difficult to understand and accept.  The data days have also provided me practice with being a leader, offer up coaching, and facilitating sometimes difficult conversations.