Let's Use Data, Not Just Report It

by Gary Hoachlander

High schools and community colleges throughout the nation are awash in data. Every one of these institutions collects information on enrollment, attendance, course-taking, grades, and the award of diplomas, degrees, or certificates. Additionally, most also have records on individual students' performance on standardized achievement tests, as well as a number of demographic characteristics. In most secondary and postsecondary systems, the maintenance of this information is now automated, and the investment in collecting and managing data is substantial.

Almost without exception, high schools and community colleges collect this information mainly to report it to somebody else. Student enrollment or average daily attendance is the foundation of most state and local funding systems. High schools transmit transcript information on courses taken to postsecondary admissions offices, and postsecondary institutions report course loads and completion rates to state and federal financial aid administrators. Grades are reported to parents and students and, occasionally, to employers.

In short, when it comes to data, educators are usually in report mode. Little wonder, then, that we tend to view data as a burden--a seemingly endless series of demands from district, state, and federal offices that take valuable time away from the more important business of educating our students.

But what if data were an asset, a key resource for improving teaching and the programs we provide for our students? Just a wishful but unrealistic pipe dream, you say? Maybe not, according to Karen Levesque and her co-authors at NCRVE's MPR Associates site who have just completed At Your Fingertips: Using Everyday Data to Improve Schools.

At Your Fingertips invites educators to adopt a different perspective on data: begin to view the information we routinely report to others as something useful for realizing our own objectives for improving teaching and learning. Consider a simple example.

Assume that last year, your school or school district reported average daily attendance as 92.7 percent. How would you regard this achievement--good, bad, or indifferent? Most teachers and administrators have never really considered this question, and at first blush, most are quite satisfied with this accomplishment. In most classroom situations, after all, a score of nearly 93 percent is an "A."

However, when a high school district that participated in the development of At Your Fingertips examined this outcome more closely, they came to a very different conclusion. They asked themselves: what does this figure tell us concretely about student attendance in our district? Much to their surprise, they realized, average daily attendance of 92.7 percent means that students, on the average, missed more than 13 days of school in a 180-day year, or more than 17 days on an annualized basis. Such a level of absenteeism in the workplace would be intolerable, and yet it is routine in American high schools. That figure of 92.7 percent was the national average for secondary schools in 1993-94.

With a new perspective on attendance, teachers and administrators in this district began to implement a range of strategies to improve it. They began a program of teachers' calling parents of absent students, not just to check on the reason for a student's not coming to school but also to discuss more generally the student's progress. They set targets for improved attendance and challenged the students to equal or better the performance of the faculty, with the weekly records of both groups reported during the morning announcements over the school's public address system. They also established a series of gradually higher rewards for students who achieved perfect attendance for the month, quarter, semester, and school year. During the following three years, this district succeeded in raising its average daily attendance from 92.7 percent to almost 95 percent, an average per-student increase of almost 5 days (one week!) in time in school.

When we begin to use everyday school data for our own purposes, other surprising findings often emerge. What percentage of all grades awarded to high school seniors during their four years in high school are Ds and Fs? The national average is 24 percent, an astonishingly high rate of failure. If your school performs at this level, what can be done about it? What percentage of students beginning community college for the first time, with the objective of obtaining an associates degree, actually earn one within four years of first enrolling? The national average is less than 25 percent. Is this an acceptable completion rate, and if not, what can be done to improve it?

To help make better use of data that are routinely available in high schools, as well as postsecondary institutions, At Your Fingertips leads teachers, administrators, and other stakeholders through six interrelated steps to developing a useful system of performance indicators and improvement practices:

Establish Goals
Identify Related Outcomes, Practices, and Inputs
Determine Data Sources and Indicators
Examine the Data
Set Performance Targets
Monitor Performance Over Time

Additionally, the workbook provides simple, easy to understand instruction in how to analyze and interpret data and how to report results clearly and effectively.

Data, then, need not be a burden. On the contrary, the information stored away in the management information systems of schools and school districts is, in fact, a very valuable asset. To capitalize on this value, we need to do more than just report out information. We must learn to use it to improve teaching and learning, the basic stuff of schools and classrooms.

At Your Fingertips: Using Everyday Data to Improve Schools (NCRVE MDS-1018) is available from NCRVE and MPR Associates for $39.95, with discounts for orders of multiple copies. To order, as well as for more information on related technical assistance, call 800-677-6987 or visit the MPR website at <http://www.mprinc.com/html/resources/ayf_brochure_main.htm>.

Gary Hoachlander is the director of the NCRVE site at MPR Associates in Berkeley, CA.