Context:
The following information contains excerpts from the IES What Works Clearinghouse Practice Guide for Using Student Achievement Data to Support Instructional Decision Making. To access the full Practice Guide and other related Practice Guides, course participants should access the IES What Works Clearinghouse website. What is provided here in this handout includes selected text but not all resources provided within the Practice Guide.
IES What Works Clearinghouse Practice Guide for Using Student Achievement Data to Support Instructional Decision Making
Summary of the recommendations
The recommendations in this guide create a framework for effectively using data to make instructional decisions. This framework should include a data system that incorporates data from various sources, a data team in schools to encourage the use and interpretation of data, collaborative discussion sessions among teachers about data use and student achievement, and instruction for students about how to use their own achievement data to set and monitor educational goals. A central message of this practice guide is that effective data practices are interdependent among the classroom, school, and district levels. Educators should become familiar with all five recommendations and collaborate with other school and district staff to implement the recommendations concurrently, to the extent that state and district resources and capacity allow.
However, readers who are interested in implementing data-driven recommendations in the classroom should focus on recommendations 1 and 2. Readers who wish to implement data-driven decision making at the school level should focus on recommendations 3 and 4. Readers who wish to bolster district data systems to support data-driven decision making should focus on recommendation 5.
Recommendations 1 and 2 emphasize the use of data to inform classroom-level instructional decisions. Recommendation 1 suggests that teachers use data from multiple sources to set goals, make curricular and instructional choices, and allocate instructional time. It describes the data sources best suited for different types of instructional decisions and suggests that the use of data be part of a cycle of instructional inquiry aimed at ongoing instructional improvement. Building on the use of data to drive classroom-based instructional decisions, recommendation 2 provides guidance about how teachers can instruct students in using their own assessment data to develop personal achievement goals and guide learning. Teachers then can use these goals to better understand factors that may motivate student performance and can adjust their instruction accordingly.
Recommendation 2. Teach students to examine their own data and set learning goals
Teachers should provide students with explicit instruction on using achievement data regularly to monitor their own performance and establish their own goals for learning. This data analysis process—similar to the data use cycle for teachers described in recommendation 1—can motivate both elementary and secondary students by mapping out accomplishments that are attainable, revealing actual achievement gains and providing students with a sense of control over their own outcomes. Teachers can then use these goals to better understand factors that may motivate student performance and adjust their instructional practices accordingly.
Students are best prepared to learn from their own achievement data when they understand the learning objectives and when they receive data in a user-friendly format. Tools such as rubrics provide students with a clear sense of learning objectives, and data presented in an accessible and descriptive format can illuminate students’ strengths and weaknesses (see recommendation 5 for more information on reporting formats).37 Many practices around data rely on the assumption38 of a relationship between formative assessment and feedback
Brief summary of evidence to support the recommendation
Two randomized controlled trials that met WWC standards (one with and one without reservations) found positive effects of interventions in which students used their own assessment data. One study found that curriculum-based measurement interventions combined with student analysis of their own assessment data and feedback from their teachers led to statistically significant gains in student achievement.42 A second study reported statistically significant gains in achievement for students given access to an interactive website reporting student test scores and providing advice for improving those scores. However, the WWC could not confirm the statistical significance of these gains.43 To add detail and specificity to this recommendation, and to supplement the information available in these two studies, the panel relied upon its own expertise and referred to several case studies and descriptive analyses of examples of feedback and to provide information needed to construct sample feedback tools.
Recommendation 2.
Teach students to examine their own data and set learning goals
1. Explain expectations and assessment criteria.
To interpret their own achievement data, students need to understand how their performance fits within the context of classroom-level or schoolwide expectations. Teachers should articulate the content knowledge or skills that they expect students to achieve throughout the school year, conveying goals for individual lessons and assignments, as well as goals for the unit and end-of-year performance. Teachers should explicitly describe the criteria that will be used to assess performance toward those goals. For example, when teachers use a rubric to provide feedback (an example is provided in Example 2), teachers should introduce the rubric at the beginning of the assignment so that students know which criteria are important before they begin working on a task or assignment.44 Rubrics can provide useful feedback on complex skills such as writing an effective essay or term paper, delivering a persuasive speech, or executing a science experiment. Teachers also can have students assess a sample assignment using the rubric to help them better understand the criteria. Once the students’ actual assignments are completed and evaluated, students should receive the completed rubric from the teacher.
Because public school students in many grades are required to take annual standards-based accountability tests in selected subjects, teachers should help students understand the state standards they are expected to meet by regularly revisiting the standards throughout the year. For example, a 5th-grade teacher could spend a few minutes at the beginning of an instructional unit explaining that certain essential concepts in the lesson (e.g., literary devices such as similes) may appear on the annual test. Students could keep a running list of these standards-based concepts throughout the year, using the list as a basis for review before the annual test. Note that making students familiar with content standards is not the same as engaging in extensive practice using problems or tasks designed to mirror the format of a specific test. The latter may result in spurious test-score gains and is not recommended by the panel.45
2. Provide feedback to students that is timely, specific, well formatted, and constructive
Providing students with thoughtful and constructive feedback on their progress may improve academic achievement.46 Feedback should be designed to help students understand their own strengths and weaknesses, explaining why they received the grades and scores they did and identifying the specific content areas the student should focus on to improve their scores. Such feedback often has the following characteristics:
3. Provide tools that help students learn from feedback.
Simply giving students assessment data that are accessible and constructive does not guarantee that they will know what to do with the data. Students need the time and tools to analyze the feedback; otherwise, they may simply glance at the overall score without considering why they achieved that score and what they could do to improve.
When providing feedback, teachers should set aside 10 to 15 minutes of classroom instructional time to allow students to interpret and learn from the data. It is important to undertake this reflection during class time, when the teacher can help students interpret feedback and strategize ways to improve their performance. During this time, teachers should have students individually review written feedback and ask questions about that feedback.
Teachers also can provide students with paper- or computer-based tools for interpreting feedback, such as the following:
For example, after returning test results to students at the beginning of the school year, a teacher might ask all students to identify specific strengths and weaknesses by analyzing their responses to specific questions on the test. She could then guide the students to submit in writing realistic improvement goals for two particular skills with weak scores. Students with no demonstrated weaknesses could be invited to select a topic for which enrichment could be provided. By helping students make data-based decisions about their own learning goals, the teacher would be emphasizing their responsibility for improving their own learning.
It also is possible to use reflective data tools in subjects such as math, for which rubrics are less common. For instance, Example 4 illustrates a worksheet students might use for understanding the errors they made on a mathematics test. The purpose of such a tool is for students to learn to diagnose their own errors, distinguishing careless mistakes from concepts that they still need to master.
4. Use students’ data analyses to guide instructional changes
Although data analysis tools help students learn from teacher feedback, they also provide valuable information that teachers can use to inform instruction. Teachers should collect and review students’ goals and analyses to identify content areas and skills that need to be reinforced and factors that may motivate student learning. For example, teachers can
Potential roadblocks and solutions
Roadblock 2.1. Students view the feedback they receive as a reflection on their ability rather than an opportunity for focused improvement.
Suggested Approach. Teachers should give student feedback that is explanatory and provides students with a chance to improve.56 Teachers should emphasize the students’ level of performance on a task in relation to the learning goals and avoid making global statements about the student’s ability. Encouraging goal setting also is important because students may be more willing to view feedback as a source of useful information if there is a larger goal that they are working to achieve.
Roadblock 2.2. Teachers within a school have different approaches to providing feedback to their students.
Suggested Approach. Although each teacher should engage with students in ways he or she finds effective, teachers may nevertheless benefit from professional development on how to provide concrete and constructive feedback that informs student learning through students’ own data. Teachers should collaborate with peers to develop a shared understanding about what constitutes formative feedback, and how and when such feedback should be provided (see recommendation 1). Teachers may even benefit from inviting students to take part in these conversations and share how they use and respond to instructional feedback.
Roadblock 2.3. Teachers are concerned that they do not have enough instructional time to explain rubrics or help students analyze feedback.
Suggested Approach. The panel recognizes that instruction time is limited. However, time spent explaining assessment tools and strategies for analyzing feedback is essential to helping students understand their own achievement. Thus, it should be a natural, integral part of the teaching process—not an add-on activity. Incorporating time for students’ analysis of their own data into routine classroom activities may help students develop a habit of learning from feedback, making them more independent as the year progresses. Helping students understand assessment tools and analyze feedback also puts students at the vanguard of the school’s culture of data use.