Professional Development

Designing a Data-Friendly Environment for Teachers

By Stephen Sawchuk — March 23, 2010 1 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Newark, N.J., is moving ahead to try to get information on student performance into teachers’ hands in a nonthreatening way. And it’s got a partner in the American Federation of Teachers.

That’s according to a release from the district, where schools are creating a data “urgent care” room in each school. In these rooms, the student data will be displayed prominently, and teachers can meet there to review and use them to plan how they’ll shape upcoming lessons.

The AFT also helped to craft a training course on the use of data, which the local affiliate will work to expand with training this summer for all the district’s schools.

This work comes as a good reminder that while teachers are often wary of the use of data for “summative” or evaluative purposes, they also see the value of the information when it is used for ongoing improvement. Here’s some additional information from the AFT on the project.

Related Tags:

A version of this news article first appeared in the Teacher Beat blog.