BoardWise
t is likely that new and veteran governance team members from local educational agencies both small and large throughout California find there are certain issues that can seem perennially insurmountable, despite boards devoting resources and energy to facing them. One such issue is how to close the achievement gap.
As a veteran superintendent and former leader of the Association of California School Administrators (ACSA), I know the critical importance of measuring outcomes cannot be underestimated. After all, as educators and governing boards, we must hold ourselves accountable to the goals we set for our students, our system as a whole and ourselves. Using data to measure outcomes is an essential part of any improvement cycle, and everyone responsible for educating children needs data to make decisions.
School districts collect data to drive instruction in the classroom, identify gaps in opportunity and outcomes, examine district and school culture, and gain an understanding of the health and well-being of students and staff. All this is to find the best ways to better support students and close opportunity and access gaps with the ultimate goal of better outcomes for every child.
Further, financial decisions made by the board should reflect districts’ core values, mission, vision and outcomes for children and the system as a whole, as reflected in the annual approval of the LEA’s budget and LCAP.
Administrators bringing data to the board table is key. Each year, once California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress results are published on the California Dashboard, LEA staff is expected to present this information at a board meeting.
What is important to note is that this information is a summative glimpse of the prior year’s performance and that there are a plethora of assessments and data collected and used in schools throughout the year to ensure students are learning the standards and achieving at a high level of proficiency. These multiple measures include quantitative and qualitative data on academic performance (local formative assessment data, grades, etc.), behavior and support systems (California Healthy Kids Survey and other local surveys), culture and climate surveys, family/caretaker engagement data and much more.
How meaningful achievement data is gathered in the classroom should also be of interest to boards. Formative assessments may be used to plan instruction in each classroom. Also called “common” assessments, they are usually developed by teachers to measure understanding of essential standards in the same grade level/subject area/course. The emphasis on “common” is so that instructors teaching specific standards in the same course and/or grade level can work together collaboratively to determine how students are learning and plan tiered instruction and interventions.
Additionally, disaggregating data is of utmost importance when it comes to addressing gaps, requiring educators to analyze all available data with an equity framework. An example of such analysis is when districts examine what is usually called “D and F data.” This data can mask disparities unless they are disaggregated by student groups, such as ethnicity, English language proficiency, economic status and so forth. Triangulation of disaggregated data is an essential step in pinpointing areas of growth and planning next steps in addressing disparities in outcomes. For instance, looking at grades in a particular subject as a whole — versus analyzing it along with a particular student groups’ ethnicity, economic status and/or years in a program — often masks disparities in instruction and in the culture and climate of a classroom, department or a school.
As appropriate to their role, board members are not involved in this kind of analysis at a granular level, but supporting the administration team (and the structure they put in place for this work to happen) and communicating the importance of such efforts to the community are critical. In order for staff to have honest and transparent communication about teaching and learning, using disaggregated data in multiple ways requires trust, time and consistency.
Developing trust between teachers, and between site/district administration and teachers, allows for critical conversations about practice. Time allocated to this type of work is worth its weight in gold! Without time for professionals to discuss student performance and analyze data to plan instruction, major gains in results are difficult, if not impossible. Consistency in practice is another element that LEAs must always keep an eye on. Governing boards’ decisions related to the budget and LCAP, and their clarity in adopting/updating board policies can and do have real impact on how data is used, and its perceived and real value. This in turn reflects district priorities and what a system holds as sacred when it comes to student learning.
Consider these questions to ask the next time your board looks at data:
- What data do we use to measure the effectiveness of programs?
- How do our teachers use data to drive their instruction?
- How do we identify opportunity gaps and outcome disparities between groups of students, and what are we doing to address the gaps in achievement?
- What can we do to more effectively support your work to close academic gaps and support students’ social-emotional well-being?