Taking an Inquiry Stance
by Nicola White
The end of last school year concluded my ongoing collaboration with a principal intern. My work with her involved attending regular meetings with the 9th grade English teacher team and collecting assessment data about student performance on select standards we felt aligned with 9th grade skill sets. This coming year, I will be carrying on this work as literacy data coordinator, a position that is certainly complex for numerous reasons.
First, my own experience selecting standards, “examining” the Common Core (and thereby giving it standing in our classrooms), delivering diagnostics, reading tests and assessments was all very exhausting. It took a lot of cajoling and back work on her end to get me to buy into the process of collecting data around reading and writing skill sets (standards).
Eventually, I did buy-in because I found it appealing to measure student’s growth in specific skill sets, and to reflect on the teaching strategies that might have promoted growth. In "Practitioner Inquiry: Versions and Variance”, Cochran-Smith and Lytle problematize data collection and selection when they allude to the issues surrounding data: "What counts as data, what data is privileged, and who decides or selects data for consideration by individuals and communities?" (56). By looking exclusively at Common Core, PA and even New York Regents standards was I engaging in an act of privileging top down (federal and state level) approaches to determining what kids should learn? Was I reinforcing the oppressive testing culture by modeling my assessments from Keystone questions and giving multiple - choice reading tests? Was additional time taken from class time and all school meetings to administer major tests and give standards aligned class quizzes? Yes. Did I take time out of preps to design assessments and evaluate data with my supervisor? Yes. Did the data reveal important details about my 9th grade students that helped me instruct them better? Yes.
Through observation, I learned that Jose S. worked hard to improve his reading, assessment data indicated that he hovered around the 7th grade reading level and struggled immensely with spelling and English grammar. By the end of the year, he had redrafted a research paper numerous times, nailed the spellings for several particularly difficult words for him, and improved his reading level.
The data also indicated that there were a lot of areas where students needed even more support: vocabulary retention, writing structure and clarity of ideas, understanding timing in a story, reading and writing stamina. Cochran-Smith and Lytle posit that the intersection to teacher inquiry with data is a commitment to improving learning experiences and outcomes for students: “Teachers working together collaboratively in school based groups to examine student and school data in order to take collective responsibility for students’ learning.” This passage called into question how student generated writing and literacy data collection and analysis could build off of and benefit from more personalized classroom experiences in these mediums.
In working as the data coordinator next year, could I ask teachers to determine their areas of concern or curiosity for student writing and reading skills and develop a plan to measure their students following a series of action steps. For example, a teacher who wants to see if writing memoirs in first person and then practicing writing from another person’s perspective while reading multicultural novels can help students understand narrator point of view in reading and writing, organize and write a story, and ultimately form and organize written, academic arguments?
Perhaps I won't have to rely on as much cajoling as I had experienced with my first year of data-informed instruction, maybe I can use teachers individual curiosity to help drive data production and analysis in order to give students more multidimensional experiences of reading and writing assignments in their classes.
Nicola White teaches English at Kensington High School for Creative and Performing Arts. Nicola joined the Philadelphia Writing Project in 2014 attending the Invitational Summer Institute.