USING DATA to IMPROVE STUDENT LEARNING: Elementary School » (1st Edition)

Victoria L. Bernhardt, Ph.D., celebrated author of six highly praised books, is Executive Director of the Education for the Future Initiative and Professor at California State University, Chico. Dr. Bernhardt conducts workshops on data analysis and student achievement at local, regional, state, national, and international levels.

This book helps you make sense of the data your school collects, including state student achievement results as well as other qualitative and quantitative data. Easy-to-use templates, tools, and examples are available on the accompanying CD-Rom.

High stakes accountability requires that you understand the strengths, challenges, and implications of your school improvement plan. "Using Data to Improve Student Learning in Middle Schools" shows you how to-
 Look carefully at your students' current test scores and other qualitative and quantitative data
 Compare your results to what you want them to be * Find the gaps and the root causes of the gaps
 Plan and implement a school improvement plan based on your school's actual data

This book and CD-Rom analyzes data from actual elementary schools and provides you with files and templates into which you can enter data from your own school.
This is the first title in Victoria L. Bernhardt's new series. Future titles will focus on middle schools, high schools, and districts.

When it comes to analyzing student achievement data, the first two questions educators ask are "Now that we have the data, what analyses should we make?" and "What do the analyses tell us?"

These questions are hard to answer on the spot, so I have taken up the challenge to develop a series of books with the purposes of showing what analyses can be made, describing what these analyses are telling us, and illustrating how to use these analyses in continuous school improvement planning. This series of books includes: Using Data to Improve Student Learning in Elementary Schools, Using Data to Improve Student Learning in Middle Schools, Using Data to Improve Student Learning in High Schools, and Using Data to Improve Student Learning in School Districts.
Most of the time we must look at K-12 data to ensure a continuum of learning that makes sense for all students. I have purposefully separated building levels so there would be ample space to do a fairly comprehensive job of data analysis at each organizational level and to make the point about needing to understand results beyond one school level.

Each of these four publications uses real data (with some slight alterations to blur identities and to fill gaps where data are missing) and shows the actual descriptive analyses I would perform if I were the person analyzing the data at that particular level. The first set of data shows a school, or district, that has state testing at relatively few grade levels. This set is shown in the chapters. For readability purposes, the second set of data, with consistent measures at every grade level over time, is shown in its own chapter, Chapter 9. You will see differences in what data analyses can be performed, and what they tell us when the measures are consistent and ongoing. You will also see that no matter how much or how little data your school has, the data can tell the story of your school The study questions at the end of each chapter serve as guides for the reader. I have described what I saw in the analyses following the study questions for readers who want the feedback.

The goal with this book is for anyone to be able to set up these analyses, regardless of the statistical resources available. Therefore, in addition to showing the analyses in the text, the graphing templates, complete narratives, and supplementary tools appear on the accompanying CD.
With the enactment of "No Child Left Behind," every school and district in the country will need to analyze their data to ensure adequate yearly progress. Sometimes, looking at another's analyses makes it easier to see things you would not have seen while looking only at your own analyses. My hope is that you will find this book and the CD to be helpful as you think through the analyses of YOUR data.

This book is intended for school and district teachers and administrators who want to use data to continuously improve what they do for children; and for college and university professors who teach school administrators, teachers, and support personnel how to analyze school data. It is my belief that all professional educators must learn how to use data in this time of high-stakes accountability. I also believe that these practical and descriptive analyses are more important for practitioners to learn to perform than inferential statistics.