The Data Revolution: “Informing” Classroom Instruction, or, Using Faux Science to Manipulate Scores and Attack Teacher Union Contracts?

 

 

School systems, schools and teachers are drowning in data.

 

From Arne Duncan and his hundreds of millions in federal dollars, to the Department with ARIS and Maximus, to the foundations, all calling for the establishment of data systems.

 

Numbers, the appearance of a scientific method, gives credence to the call for merit pay and data driven teacher evaluation/dismissal.

 

Numbers, properly controlled and manipulated allow for predetermined “success.”

 

From graded Progress Reports and Quality Reviews, to State tests, to predicative assessments, to Acuity, bits of data after bits of data.

 

Teachers sit in PDs, faculty conferences and listen to lectures, “data-driven instruction,” “data informing classroom practice,” on and on.

 

An unanswered question: does the use of “formal data systems” make teachers more effective? How do we know it?

 

The Department keeps track of ARIS usage, lets call it, “clicks per school.” Are “high click” schools more effective schools as measured by pupil achievement?

 

Rumor has it that ARIS usage is, for the Department’s $85 investment, distressingly low.

 

Data is not unique to the field of education: horse racing and baseball are heavy users of data.

 

Every  horse race and every workout are timed by quarter mile segments, the track (dirt, turf or poly), the condition of the track (firm, sloppy), the sire and dam of the horse and their records, the jockey and his/her record. Do you know a “rich” better? In each of the Triple Crown races a long shot won, so much for data!

 

In baseball the use of data has a name, sabermetrics , and a classic book about Oakland General Manager Billy Beane’s use of baseball data called, “Moneyball.” Is Bill James, the leading baseball data analyst the reason why the Red Sox have won 2003 and 2007 World Series? Or, is it their payroll, second highest in baseball? Does data make players better?

 

The use of enormous datum sets are commonly used to determine policy in government, called “Super Crunching.”

 

Third grade teachers were sitting in a PD, the topic was reviewing the ELA test data in NYSTART, identifying skills on which the students did not do well and creating lesson plans to address the problem. The third grade teachers were using a proprietary program, with workbooks, texts and teacher guides. The lesson plans they created consisted of the pages in the teacher guide and the workbooks that addressed the skills. The instructor asked, “If the students didn’t learn the skill the first time you taught what makes you think they will learn it the second time … do you have to adjust your approach?” He received blank stares, you couldn’t “adjust” what you taught, the “program” was the gospel.

 

Data may inform school systems, does the use of data make for better teachers?

 

How do we identify an excellent teacher? We can ask the principal, colleagues and parents. and, look at the data. What practices make the teacher “excellent”? If we carefully observe her, in the classroom and out of the classroom what do we observe? In fact, a Department of Education initiative called “low inference teacher observations” is  an excellent tool to parse instruction. While data inquiry teams are mandated in every school their partner, low inference observation is ignored.  Too time consuming, say principals. The main instructional compliance tool is the supervisory observation report … a totally inadequate method of improving instruction.

 

Data is useful to school districts and school leaders, it can inform the distribution of dollars, or, be used as a weapon to drive teacher contract negotiations. For the classroom teacher data only re-enforces what experienced teachers know … in my first teaching job, lo those many years ago, we used Regents exam items on classroom tests, analyzed the results, and altered our lessons. What used to take hours typing on those purple rexo stencils now takes minutes.

 

Teachers have always used data … access to data and the disaggregation of data has been faciltated.

 

Teaching is more art than science.

 

If Arne continues to use data to drive policies that are viewed by teachers as attacks on pay and evaluation systems he will erode teacher support for the president.

 

It would be a sad irony if in 2012 the impact of the Duncan education polices  not only did not change the face of education but drove teachers into the camps of other candidates.