Analyzing your data is a process in which you will want to involve your entire staff. Good data-driven dialogue leads to data-driven decisions. If you engage staff in an ongoing data dialogue about what the data is telling you, it is much more likely they will feel ownership for the data-based decisions you collectively make.
There are numerous resources on MDK12 to help you engage your staff in analyzing their state assessment data. Low performance areas will drive your school improvement goals.
The online School Progress data will serve as a stimulus for rich data discussions. A question approach is used to guide you through a drilling down process of examining your data. There is also information online to help your team understand what is assessed, where your performance is and whether you met your school's AMOs.
Though our school progress data give us useful information about our school's performance and, therefore, about our areas of needed improvement, they also leave us with a number of important questions that need additional data to answer.
These questions can be answered by examining your school's graphed data in the Analyzing MSA Data section of MDK12.org for students in grades 3-8 or by examining your school's data in the Analyzing HSA Data section for high school students. In addition to accessing graphs of your school and district's performance, you will find some tips in how to lead the data analysis discussion, some suggestions for next steps, and links to additional information about MSA or HSA. The MSA Data tutorial will get you started on how to examine your MSA data. Key questions that school teams need to address during this process include
You will also want school teams to generate a list of questions your data raise as they work through the data analysis process.
Once the data has been studied and strengths and weaknesses identified, the school will need to identify the most urgent and compelling needs. Some schools may find they have instructional challenges in many areas whereas other schools may be moving student achievement toward the advanced level. Though a good instructional program will address all of the appropriate content standards, a good school improvement plan will focus a school-wide effort on one or two priority instructional needs.