The New York City school district’s experience in implementing a new data-management system aimed at making a wealth of student-level data available to teachers is the subject of a new report by Education Sector, a Washington-based think tank.
Released last week, the report looks at how the nation’s largest school system tackled the technical challenges of the $80 million Achievement Reporting and Innovation System and how it spurred educators to put the data to work.
Teachers have used the new data system to engage in a method known as “collaborative inquiry,” which brings together teams of educators to focus on specific groups of students, such as 6th graders who failed last year’s state mathematics exam. With student-level data, the teams can craft more specific interventions for the students.
The report recommends that data systems go beyond supplying just compliance-based information to include data that allow teachers to figure out which students are struggling and why.
