Data data every where

I told one of my cohort buddy's today that I am certain by the end of this internship I will dream of graphs and pages and pages of numbers! This school district <3's data! I understand that this is a good thing - but it is taking a little while to get used to! I am having flash backs of my horrid under graduate research methods classes. Ick!

First thing I did today was get a lesson in CBM. I was shown the Aimsweb data probes and given the directions and the script. It seems pretty easy and quick. I also got my logistics question answered that I had been wondering about - are we pulling kids out of the classroom for just a 1 minute probe? The answer - no, we just sit in the back of the class and pull kids while the teacher does their thing.  We will be norming all of the second grade next Thursday afternoon. THEN we will get to plug all the beloved data into Excel and SPSS to look at graphs and see how the kids are doing compared to previous year 2nd graders as well as national norms. I am looking forward to the process. I will need to take close notes! Although I have always loved research - I am pretty ignorant when it comes to running data in SPSS.

I also attended a meeting on Professional Learning Communities (PLC's). They are all the rage at the moment. I still am trying to figure out it all, but it sounds like it really strives for collaboration between the teachers of the same grade level/subject. The school administration of the site I was at wants the teachers presenting the data in line with a pacing guide AND a daily schedule so that every class is working on the same thing at the same time. I can understand the pacing guide. I mean, it is much easier to say, you need to get through all these subjects by the date of this bench mark. But to dictate to the teachers how long they can teach each lesson and the order at which they need to present it? I think that is a bit wacky! I'm not a teacher, nor do I have any formalized teaching experience, but I really can't say that I would enjoy being told how and when to teach my kids. So I am not sure how well that portion will go over. But the general idea behind PLC's is rather positive. It is data driven, although not via scientifically valid instruments, and it encourages a team approach. So it could work, if the teachers are receptive to it.

The rest of my day today was studying the local California State Testing (CST) scores. We looked at about 16 different schools within the county (some in the Fairfield SD, but the majority outside of the district). It was pretty interesting stuff. We charted the last five years of API scores and how much the different schools had improved. It gave me a good idea of how are county looks on those tests. It was also very interesting to look at the population data from the different schools. I initially assumed that schools with a high population of English Language Learners would have lower API scores. Although for the most part this is true, it is not definite. A larger district in the county proved my hypothesis dead wrong! They were 50% ELL, and 90 something % eligible for free and reduced lunch and in the past 5 years they had raised their API 110 points! Isn't that outstanding?! I know that this district uses a form of RTI, although not one that matches Fairfield's model. Whatever it is that they are doing must be working! I would love to go an observe and try to find what their secret is!