Using School Performance Data
Interpreting 1995-96 Reports | Interpreting 1996-98
Reports | Cluster Information
School performance data can be used to improve the education we offer students. The Council for School Performance has issued school system and school performance reports to provide you with an impartial and accurate source of data. This data can be used by schools and the communities they serve to provide benchmarks for performance and measures of accountability.
By analyzing the Council for School Performance School and School System Performance Reports, you will be able to identify strengths and weaknesses in your schools and community. The performance reports and data from other sources can help you compare and analyze your school's performance. After identifying areas of weakness, you can search for the possible causes of problems and options for addressing them.
The following steps will help to guide you in using school performance data for educational improvement:
Step One: Link to Programs and People
To develop a successful plan, the planning process must include broad representation of stakeholders from the very beginning. Plan to involve members of the school staff and appropriate community members in large and small group meetings. Existing meetings, such as department, grade level, or faculty meetings and community advisory meetings, may be used for these discussions. However, from planning to implementation, time for teachers to participate must be built into the school work schedule.
It is not necessary to create a new school improvement program. There may already be a school improvement program or group that can meet your needs, or there may be an opportunity to add additional people to an existing group that is addressing school improvement. In fact, you may be more successful if you use existing programs, mandates, or vehicles that have been set up to focus on school improvement.
The Council data can help to inform data-focused school committees, teams, or task forces in areas such as action research, Title I school improvement, Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), High Schools That Work, Pay for Performance, League of Professional Schools, and Next Generation Schools. These groups can use the Council data as an additional source of information as they study performance in their school. For example, in designing Pay for Performance or Charter School applications, school staff could use Council data to select goals and evaluate progress from one year to the next.
Step Two: Look for Strengths and Weaknesses
Using appropriate workgroups, analyze your data to identify areas in need of school wide attention. You should use data from Council indicators and other sources as you look for both strengths and weaknesses in your school and system. Compare the performance of your school and system to the performance of other schools and systems in the state to determine possible areas of need in your schools and community. After determining your school
or system’s weaknesses, use the Council data to further examine the causes of the problems. For example, you may find that student achievement is linked to problems with attendance or lack of parental involvement.
Step Three: Establish Priorities
Determine the importance of the problem area in light of the potential causes and your knowledge of the students, the learning environment, and the community. Establish priorities for improvement that maintain a focus on student learning and existing school goals. Also, focus on areas for improvement that are within the control of the school and community.
Step Four: Investigate Options
Using appropriate workgroups or study groups, review the professional literature relating to the priorities identified for your school. Use the research or contact other schools that have high performance ratings to identify successful strategies. For example, a middle school that wants to improve achievement for at-risk students might consider a mentoring program that has a proven track record for this target population. Smaller study groups could share their information with the larger school improvement group to assist school staff and the community in the selection or creation of "best" options for improvement. Remember to focus on results, not just strategies.
After you have selected or designed options for addressing your priorities for school improvement, it is time to develop action plans. The plans should merge with ongoing improvement efforts in your schools and community. Generally plans identify: (1) what the problem is (may be stated as a goal or objective), (2) what actions and/or strategies have been selected to address the problem, (3) who will implement the plan, (4) what resources will be allocated to the implementation, (5) when the implementation will occur, and (6) how and when progress and results will be measured. The plan should focus on student learning. It is also critical that you make provisions for time and resources for both staff development and continued study of data relating to the priorities being addressed.
Step Six: Implement and Measure
Although groups have been engaged in "action" all along the way--from review of data to the development of action plans--they now have a written description of procedures that they can follow as they implement the action plan. Action plans help to direct school wide initiatives. They also guide data collection , which is needed to measure progress on improvements. Your evaluation may lead you to modify existing action plans or develop additional plans.