I See You Freaking Out There With Your Hand Up

No, this is not a post about freak dancing, although that is and continues to be an issue on our campus.

No, today was a Departmental Data Day -- but don't think that because I've capitalized the phrase that it's actually a time-tested tradition on our campus.
(As an aside, what's with my dubious alliteration so far?)
We met as a department to look over two previous years' state standardized test scores -- some of the information broken down by teacher. We also looked at a two previous years' classroom D/F grades (including last semester). We also received schoolwide classroom grade breakdowns. Some of the information was useful, and some not.

I have mixed feelings about it. Data does provide us with information. I can see that my current students had issues with literary response and writing conventions on the test, so I can structure some lessons to strengthen their skills. That seems workable.

Often, however, I think there's not enough data to accurately predict shifts in trends, or if there is, we don't know how to read it well enough to make a difference in our teaching. The best we can do is patchwork -- and make no mistake, we have some areas that need patching!

I'm not sure how to take the graphs that broke down last year's freshman class by teacher. Though all our students were well above the state average (mind you, that has little to do with us -- it's just our demographic), my scores were the lowest of the three teachers included; I didn't expect that. They weren't in the toilet -- they were good. Just not as good as students' grades for teachers who I thought didn't work as hard as I did last year. I'm suffering a little cognitive dissonance over the teacher I think I am versus what the data implies.

(Although I have to take the data with a whole cupful of salt, since a teacher appeared in our graph who didn't have freshmen last year.)

The other difficulty is that looking at last year's data doesn't really help us with the kids we're teaching this year. And it's going to be radically different, I think, if we do this again next spring.

See, until 2005, the high school didn't track students -- or not as much or as openly as some schools do. Though we had Advanced Placement classes, we offered no special sections of honors classes in any class except science. Neither the middle or the high school grouped according to designated ability, unless some students needed to be in SDC, ELL, or pullout RSP programs.

When the middle school teachers in my department received their class lists this year, one teacher had all the designated GATE kids; the other, almost all the mainstreamed RSP students. Same with the eighth grade. So the data for individual teachers in the middle school is going to change next year, simply because the classroom demographic is different.

We have increased honors offerings in English, science, and math this year. Don't get me wrong, I love my honors kids. Their scores will end up making the bar graph I'm bothered by this year my prize possession next year -- regardless of how I teach, for the most part. But for those who look at the graph as an indicator of teacher performance (hello, merit pay debate), that data is going to be skewed as all hell.

I guess my main point is this: data can be valuable, but we need to know what exactly it's measuring, and if that measurement is accurate. There's so much more to a school than what most data shows. There's so much we can't see, interpret, or control. I'm not trying to make excuses; I guess I'm just a little overwhelmed by how our school will be/is judged on statistics. I think I'm beginning to understand a small fraction of what teachers and administrators at designated lower-performing schools must feel.

This blog post title is courtesy of my department chair, who helped us get through a weird and data-driven (driving-us-crazy) day today.


For the purists among you, humblest apologies for treating "data" as a singular noun. The word data is the plural of Latin datum, “something given,” but it is not always treated as a plural noun in English.