Data-driven support systems: aggressive use of student data helps educators tailor individual solutions that fill the gaps in student learning.

There can be a number of reasons why a student becomes unsuccessful in school. As this lack of success continues over time, the student often seeks or is counseled into an alternative setting so he or she can get back on track for graduation.

When students arrive at an alternative school program, the task of meeting their academic needs can be overwhelming. Vital information needed to create an educational plan must be gathered. The challenge for the new program staff can become daunting when attempts to retrieve documentation from previous schools are unsuccessful. This leaves staff with too little information to adequately support the educational needs of the new student.

Collecting educational data that will help low-achieving students be successful will set in motion a support system that could and should eventually lead to graduation from high school.

Student data can come from a variety of sources and exist in many forms. It could be anecdotal information supplied by the student, parent or former school staff members. It could come from attendance records or transcripts. The cumulative file can reveal test results that may enlighten staff in ways that support the student and show we are not giving up on them.

In some cases, schools may have a solution that puts most of this information just a click away. Edmin.com is one Internet solution that can provide quick access to a wide array of educational data that can be sorted and compared in a meaningful way for each student. This is a fee-based product. Another option is the free, downloadable Quality School Portfolio (QSP) software developed by the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing at UCLA (Eller, 2001).

Both programs can give you information that can be disaggregated to meet your needs. QSP software allows users to conduct surveys and interviews, use observation protocols and administer questionnaires to gather data.

Using data

After creating data reports with the needed information, educators can use them in a couple of ways. First, look for specific academic areas of weakness that present a chronic educational challenge for a student. Second, look for characteristics and patterns that may predict success or failure in school for an individual or group of students. Both analyses will lead to a better understanding of all your students and will help you develop educational plans for each student.

One review of student testing records that gave insight into student academic failure was conducted by Hansel Burle at the Texas Tech University College of Education. He used results from the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) to determine that the variable with the strongest association with poor mathematics performance was a low reading score. He went on to determine that "nearly 97 percent of the students who received free- or reduced-price lunch and failed the TAAS reading exam also failed the mathematics portion" (Burley, 2001).

Staff in the alternative setting can use this type of data to change the tutoring or intervention support for math by adding a reading component for this group of students.

What data can be used for

The linkage of data to educational practice can be invaluable to administrators and teachers as they plan and develop their academic curriculum. According to Burley, data can be used to:

* work harder at understanding why students fail. A mathematics failure problem could really be a reading problem.

* pinpoint the skill deficiency most common among students, and find the factors associated with that deficiency.

* avoid self-defeating behaviors and attitudes. Create a school culture of high expectations, and remember that academic tracking is anathema to this principle.

* create a variety of opportunities for all students to demonstrate academic success. Our schools need to produce more than good test-takers; we need to help young people develop into good citizens who can solve problems. And we can do that best by redefining the school culture into one of high achievement for all (Burley, 2001).

Closing the gap

Another valuable source of data is the students themselves. Educators often speak about the myriad reasons students perform poorly in school, including lack of parental support, arriving at school hungry or a shortage of academic activities at home. Many underachieving students who transfer to an alternative program do come from minority or low socio-economic families.

But the above issues all focus on the child's home and family. In her research related to closing the learning gap, Kati Haycock points out that "young people, however, have different answers. They talk about teachers who often do not know the subjects that they are teaching. They talk about counselors who consistently underestimate their potential and place them in lower-level courses. They talk about principals who dismiss their concerns. And they talk about a curriculum and a set of expectations that feels so miserably low-level that they literally bore the students right out the school door" (Haycock, 2001).

Haycock's research into schools that are successful despite their demographics shows the following:

* Standards are key.

* All students must have a challenging curriculum.

* Students need extra help.

* Teachers matter a lot.

Technological revolution

In Arthur Levine's article, "A New Curriculum for a New Era," (Levine, June 2001) the concept of technology enhancing the delivery of course content is explored. He states, "we are witnessing a technological revolution that now challenges ... [a] lock-step curriculum by offering the potential of interactive, individually tailored, any time and any place education." Levine points out that biological research into the brain and how students actually learn will drive the need to tailor the education of students by using technology as a tool to adjust curriculum for each student quickly and as needed.

"Today schooling focuses on process and the process is roughly the same for all students," Levine said. He believes this emphasis is likely to shift from standardizing process to assessing outcomes. "The focus will then necessarily need to move from how students are taught to what they are learning." Additionally, he sees the development of students' records being a transcript of competencies that shows what students know and can do.

The integration of computers into the delivery of curriculum provides instant analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of a student's efforts and gives the teacher an opportunity to adjust lessons to improve individual learning. Many of the test-taking software programs now available have a feature called "adaptive testing," in which the test chooses harder questions as the student continues to get the correct answer, and can adjust to easier questions if the student misses questions.

Data-driven decisions

Aggressive use of all the information available to school administrators and teachers can create a system that provides data-driven decisions regarding every element of the instructional day for each student. Creating a challenging, standards-based curriculum with high expectations for student success enhances the prospects for improved learning for all students.

Taking advantage of the smaller settings that alternative programs provide and the closer student/teacher relationships, educators can tap into the heart of the problem each student is facing and have a positive impact on educational outcomes by tailoring individual solutions using suitable data. This creates additional up-front work for the school, but clearly has the potential to shorten the time needed to remediate a student's educational deficits.

As students fill gaps in their learning they will experience higher achievement and a renewed pride in their education. This new attitude should help them surge forward toward the goal of graduation.

Students do not want something for nothing. They want to hold their heads up high and receive acknowledgement that they did a good job and earned their diploma. Powerful learning environments can send each graduate into the future with skills they can count on, and help change the minds of many Americans who think public schools cannot produce quality graduates.

References

Burley, Hansel. (June 2001). "Separate & Unequal." American School Board Journal. National School Boards Association: Alexandria, VA.

Eller, Benjamin and Lee, John. (November/December 2001). "Software for hard data." Leadership. Association of California School Administrators: Sacramento, CA.

Haycock, Kati. (March 2001). "Closing the Achievement Gap." Educational Leadership. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development: Alexandria, VA.

Levine, Arthur. (June 2001). "A New Curriculum for a New Era." Curriculum Administrator. Professional Media Group: Norwalk, CT.

Patrick Judd is director of educational services for Mountain Empire Unified School District.