Haynes-Smith’s teachers were in a unique position, because they found themselves dealing with much of Hurricane Katrina’s emotional effects on their young students. Teachers have common planning time once a week, but all agreed to meet after school with no extra compensation.
Every Tuesday, teachers stay after school for two hours to conduct grade-group meetings, professional development, staff meetings, and technology meetings.
Once a month, Haynes-Smith conducts student academic reviews, where teachers discuss all the students in their classes and present strategies to help struggling students improve their achievement.
Use data effectively
This shared information from after-school meetings helps everyone at Bethune Elementary stay abreast of classroom events, Haynes-Smith said.
“Data use has to be expected by the principal, otherwise it will not happen,” Wahlstrom said. “Principals themselves may need some professional development about how to ask data-based questions of their teachers.”
Eressy uses a Response to Intervention model to post data, and teachers understand that students should constantly be advancing proficiency and progress, she said. The school values formative assessments, and Eressy said she likes to ask students what they’re working on and have them explain it to her in their own terms to gauge their understanding.
“We see data as a large bucket of things that we can use to help us develop academic and non-academic [solutions] for kids when we need to,” Hall said.
Here are the panelists’ recommendations for using data to improve instruction:
- Use all available data to understand student learning and progress.
- Have principals model data use.
- Include students in setting learning goals.
- Use all kinds of data to develop both academic and non-academic interventions.
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