M4A2

Charles LaRue
All throughout history, education has undergone evolution
incorporating changes both large and small. In the modern era, the most
important development has been the acceptance and utilization of data
based techniques. Part of being a modern teacher is wedding assessments to
gather data and utilizing that data in planning your lessons. Data-driven
instruction can be complicated, however, and it can be difficult to sift
through the many tools available to teachers to find the most effective ones.
One important but easily overlooked aspect of utilizing student data is
the importance of making sure that your assessments and lessons align with
learning goals. One of the most important uses of data is that is helps focus
the students and your instruction on relevant topics. If the students can see
what they are being graded on, explicitly and ahead of time, they are more
motivated to learn the material. Students tend to feel cheated if your
learning goals don't match their assessments, and it can erode trust between
you and your students. Once your assessments are given, the scores must
be calibrated; raw scores are useful for comparing one student to another,
but they don't necessarily show how well the students are learning.
Ultimately, we as teachers should measure our students and ourselves
against the state standards imposed upon us by the people of Arizona, and
so we should use those standards as a benchmark for our assessments (Data

Quality Campaign, 2015). By comparing the student's scores to the

standards, we can determine if the students are learning at the rate
mandated by the state, and if we are teaching to the quality demanded by
the taxpayers.
One set of commonly used tools are Classroom Response Systems, or
CRS's. CRS's are any means of immediately getting feedback from the entire
class in real time. They most commonly take the form of so-called "clickers,"
small remotes that allow the student to input an answer to a question put
before the entire class. The teacher can see how successful the students
were at answering the question, and use that to determine their course of
action (Burden & Byrd, 2015). I've also heard of teachers using online apps
to gather data, or even just colored slips of paper. How the data is gathered
is unimportant; what's important is that the data is gathered in real time
from the entire class. CRS's are powerful tools, with many applications and
strengths, not the least of which is that it helps encourage participation from
the whole class. Well chosen and timed questions can spur discussion among
the students and provide instant feedback on their ideas. They also help
introverted students participate in class; they can actively take part in an
activity without sticking their neck out (Bruff, 2010). I've been on the
receiving end of the "colored slips of paper" variety of CRS in college, and
they were always fun. However, whatever method a teacher uses as their
CRS, they must maintain anonymity of each student. If students can see
what everyone's answer is they may feel pressured to vote with the majority,

corrupting the data. One of the advantages of clickers and apps over lowertech solutions is they are private, and allow a student to vote based on their
own intuition rather than the class-wide consensus.
Another useful tool are so-called "data talks" and "data notebooks."
Data talks are segments of class where you discuss the data gleaned from
assessments thus far in the course. They can be given to the entire class to
discuss the scores of the entire class, discussed among small groups, or
discussed on an individual basis. Data notebooks records that the students
keep themselves of their own performance in the class, keeping track of their
strengths, weaknesses, skills, and areas in need of improvement. These are
powerful tools, as they allow the students to see for themselves their
performance over time, and help the students understand why the teacher is
teaching whatever he or she has chosen to teach. However, like all powerful
tools, these data talks and data notebooks need to be used with care. While
they can powerfully show how the class and individuals are performing, a
teacher must take care that each student's right to privacy is maintained. In
large groups, you should never show the grades of any individual student,
whether they are performing well or poorly, and this can be especially
difficult to do in small groups as well. When examining data with each
individual, the teacher should be careful to not be judgmental of students
who are performing poorly. The greatest risk of data talks and data
notebooks is that they can be very damaging for the morale of
underperforming students - the ones who need a morale boost the most.

On the subject of data privacy, we live in a data-driven world, and

some of the most pernicious and invasive users of data are corporations and
hackers. Much of the gigabytes of data stored about students in the United
States is stored on third-party cloud based services, and there have been
concerns about how that data might be used. There are many safeguards
against this data being leaked to companies and criminals, but accidents and
leaks do happen, such as when, in 2009, 18000 Tennessean students had
data entirely unprotected for months (Mind/Shift, 2014). Those data could
have been stolen by criminals and the students wouldn't have even known.
These concerns are largely on the administrative level, and don't directly
affect the teachers very much. However, it should be our responsibility to
learn how our student's data is being secured and stay vigilant for leaks. We
also should never expose the data of our students to anyone without the
right to that data.
The modern era is defined by its use of powerful data driven
techniques. As teachers, it would be a failing if we didn't use these
techniques to facilitate the education of the children entrusted to us. By
aligning our assessments with state standards, we can focus our lessons, and
we can enhance our lessons using Classroom Response Systems. Data talks
and data notebooks place the power of data in the hands of our students,
and allow for self-assessment. While there are risks associated with our
reliance on data gathering techniques and tools, the payoffs or more than
worth the effort as we march deeper in the 21st century.

References
Burden & Byrd (2015). Methods for Effective Teaching.
Bruff, D. (2010). Classroom Response Systems (Clickers)
Data Quality Campaign (2015). ESEA reauthorization: Why data matter.
Mind/Shift (2014). What's really at stake? Untangling the big issues
around student data.
SCEPBIS (2013). Sue Cleveland Students Discussing Data Notebooks
(4:05)