What data should be monitored to determine student achievement?
An effective school leader creates school learning goals and student learning goals. What is the difference between these two goals? A school’s learning goal is based on the school’s overall performance on the state assessment. For example, Hemingway Elementary data from the previous year’s state assessment demonstrates that 90% of the students are proficient in Reading and 94% of the students are meeting the Math standards. Therefore, the school’s learning goal is to increase proficiency in Reading and Math by a certain percentage.
Students’ learning goals reflect the goals of the subgroups in your student population. Using the previous year’s state assessment results for Hemingway Elementary, only 30% of the Hispanic students are proficient in Reading and 50% of the Black students are meeting the Math standards. Subsequently, there will need to be goals for each student subgroup. Effective school leaders would not limit the learning goals based on how the school is performing on the state standard but the achievement of all students. Moreover, effective school leaders recognize achievement gaps, which is the difference between performance outcomes of low socioeconomic and minority students to the majority population.
Effective school leaders make data-driven decisions (Knapp, Swinnerton, Copland, and Monpas-Huber 2006). If school leaders are to be data-driven decision makers, then they need to decide on what data should be monitored. The data to be monitored is what matters most to student learning. However, there are other data that influence student learning. According to Bernhardt’s research, there are multi-measures of data – student demographics, perceptions, student learning, school processes, teacher characteristics, behavior and professional learning (1998). Bernhardt argues that using multi-measures of data will give the school leaders the information they need to improve student learning and teaching. He further states that looking at just one type of data is adequate but it is not comprehensive enough to induce change. Subsequently, combining the different data gives the leader a bigger picture of the school’s impact on student achievement. Furthermore, this will assist the leader in determining how to meet the needs of all students and close achievement gaps.
