Driven by Data

Paul Bambrick-Santoyo's book, Driven by Data 2.0: A Practical Guide to Improve Instruction, describes the data meeting structure begun by Uncommon Schools. It involves highly structured plan that starts with unpacking a standard, examining exemplars to revise the what students need to know/do, student work to identify the gap, scripting a reteach, and then practicing it. Ideally this process is completed in under 30 minutes- a rigid time clock is utilized to make sure it does. For the leader of the group, be it a principal or team leader, they need to have prepared for the meeting by having unpacked the standard, gathered both exemplar and typical student work showing a gap, gathered video footage, named the gap in precise language, determined how to reteach the material to address the gap (model or discourse) and why, identified the when to reteach and thought about what that might look like. A half hour meeting might need more than a half hour to prep for, especially if the target subject is not an area of expertise of the leader. Expectations for the leader are huge.

A few years ago I was involved with a program that administered interim assessments every 10 weeks and then spent the nest three weeks going over them to identify data trends and action plans. The assessments utilized a program that collected the data and shared number of correct responses per question. This allegedly allowed staff to examine where students made errors and plan to remediate them. Ideal, right? Unfortunately the implementation was flawed. The responses were too general to provide real guidance on gaps. The assumption was that the staff knew the standards and their components well enough to target error patterns. If only one teacher taught a subject, they were a data team of one- not very effective. It was too loose to provide a path forward and no one was trained to run a data meeting. (Ah, the benefits of hindsight and increased training.)

I have been asked by many an interview team how I use data to inform instruction. I use it daily to determine if my students "got" what I presented. When I provide consultant teacher services I watch the errors my students made and then provide instruction in that area. This book allowed me to see how I might improve that process with formalizing it.

The book comes with a DVD of materials. It includes video clips of components of instruction and data meetings. Some of them are the same as those from Get Better Faster. The book utilizes it's tenet of concise language. It uses the see it, name it, do it strategy that they propose as a way to improve instruction. Very readable but somewhat repetitive. It presents a nice framework that schools could capitalize on to improve instruction.