Data Mining and Decision-Making

Just wanted to share a great resource with you. The Equity Allaince at Arizona State University is one of  10 Equity Assistance Centers across the country.The September newsletter (distributed electronically via list serve to subscribers) discusses

Data Mining and Decision-Making

Data-driven decision making for school improvement has become a part of the everyday vernacular of educators. However, saying that teachers, families and administrators need data to make decisions is one thing; understanding and using data well is another. In some schools, educators are conflicted about how to get started with the data. For others, once started with the data, questions surface about what to do and when to do it. In many cases teachers—the very people who can make the best use of student-learning data, have the least access to it………………………………

Click here to read more in the Equity Alliance September newsletter.

Recently, the SWRPDC has developed a relationship with the Midwest Equity Assistance Center

The Midwest Equity Assistance Center provides technical assistance, professional development, and    information dissemination in race equity, gender equity and national origin equity to state and local     educational agencies in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska.

At the request of public school districts, including charter and magnet schools, center staff provide a variety of    free services and resources, including professional development workshops, institutes, conferences, and in    service training for teachers, administrators and parents.

Key issues addressed by these centers include  disparities in student achievement and outcomes based on race, sex, or national origin; limited expectations for minority and female students; increasing violence and racial and sexual harassment in schools; renewed physical segregation among and within school buildings; ability grouping or tracking that isolates students based on race, sex, or national origin; persistence of stereotyping and bias; cultural bias in instructional methods and assessment tools; inadequate bilingual/ELL programs and services and recruitment/retention of highly qualified teachers.

The Midwest Center was one of the sponsors for last summer’s SWRPDC RtI Summit that educators from all over the state attended.

In the spring, Katherine Sprott, Coordinator of Professional Development at the Midwest Center, and I will be presenting at the state conferences. Katherine’s areas of expertise are poverty, data, and assessment. I hope to see you there. Equity in education is a passion of mine. That is one reason that I am working diligently to spred the word about RtI, what is is, and, more importantly, what it IS NOT. At the present time, too many educators, schools, and districts in their adoption of the RtI model,focus on the intervention side rather than the instructional side. This type of focus often causes RtI to become an exclusionary or segragating program rather than an inclusionary problem solving process. I would much rather  see the model referred to as Response to Instruction, rather than Response to Intervention.  This simple name change changes the contextual shading from a negative need for intervening when things go “wrong”, to a positive focus on what teachers can do right. Response to Instruction suggests that teachers monitor the student response to instructional strategies and modify or change strategies when they (the teachers) do not get the response they desire.  Response to Intervention suggests that students fail first, requiring an intervention of some sort that is outside the realm of the instructional process. I would be interested in hearing what you think about this name change.