Using Data In Education

To understand if something is working in the classroom you need data to see if the change helped improve the students performance. It’s only fair to see if it really did help them, right? This is the way it has been for many years and that doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon. It’s understandable yet needs to be rethought a little bit. Even though data seems to be the easiest way to see growth there are some important traits we need to see in students that most tests can not measure. Yes, tests can measure academic skills but what about life skills or a student's social and emotional well-being. These are skills that can be tested as they are vital for a student's success later in life. They are also skills that aren’t what we normally focus on nor can we. They are skills that should also be taught at home. In understanding this we must realize that all data we collect is useless until we add these elements into it.