Newark, N.J.'s schools have partnered with a national union to develop “data rooms” that will help teachers focus on continuous improvement. The goal is to help teachers more quickly target student needs and get that tailored instruction to them faster.
My colleague Steve Sawchuk has a longer look at this on the Teacher Beat blog.
In my travels to schools across the nation for Education Week, I have seen an increasing use of data walls in classrooms and data rooms in schools to help manage student performance. In fact, the schools I visited in Chicago for this story on a focused instruction model have data rooms as a key focal point of the model.
Teachers meet there in grade levels and also in school-wide teams to talk about how students are performing on assessments. Teachers in Chicago and elsewhere have told me that discussing student data with other teachers has really opened the door for them to share good practices with each other.
How is your district encouraging data conversations? Do administrators and teachers regular discuss data? Do you have a data room in your school?