What's with all the data?

One thing I found out about our school district is that it collects a lot of data, and it uses it, too. Much of it is on our district web site, posted for everyone to see. I have to give kudos to our district Director of Educational Research, Technology and Assessment, Derick Kiger. I never realized what a job he has in developing surveys, collecting data from staff, students, human resources, administration, and the community, not to mention the test data he has to analyze and submit. One of the reports he's generated has even won an award for our district. Without the data, the school would have to work harder to figure out what each schools needs are and what we can do to help fix those areas. For example, the parent survey given out over a year ago showed everyone that communication was a major issue that needed to be worked on. As a school, we brainstormed ways we could communicate our school goals as well as classroom activities, etc., throughout the school year. Teachers used many different ways to communicate with parents last year, including the school's web site. Many times throughout the year information was gathered about what was happening in every one's classroom and published on the web. Teachers sent out weekly newsletters, or even "Daily" news. 

The school academic goals were identified as reading and mathematics, as noted by the WKCE tests and OASD and state benchmarks. Each of my schools has been working on increasing reading skills and math skills this year. As this past year has ended, we'll again be looking at what the test scores say where we are and what goals we need to establish in the coming school year. I'll be using what I've been studying in this class, the data from the WINSS, the parent and student surveys to help lead our teachers in what we need to work on this following year, as we meet in August to define our needs.

I now have a greater appreciation of what Derick Kiger does. Without all his work in gathering data, assessing it and putting it into the AYP report, all of us would be working harder to understand what our needs are at each site that need to be addressed. Thank you, Derick!