March 2002 Professional Development Newsletter
THEME: USING DATA FOR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PLANNING
Education Data Partnership
DataQuest
Star Results
CAHSEE Item Analysis Reports
CAHSEE Results Reports
School Accountability Report Card (SARC)
Toolkit98
Assessment for Understanding
The Education Trust
Add It Up
Designs For Learning
Learning From the Best
Lessons from Districts: Bringing About Change
Using Data to Improve Educational Results
New Routes for Using Data
Becoming A Data-Driven Organization
Characteristics Of Strong Math/Science Staff Development
High-quality professional development plans are grounded in the use
of authentic data to assess student learning needs. Data can include
multiple measures of performance and achievement such as state,
district, school, and classroom assessments, which, when
disaggregated by subgroups, identify students who need the most
support to achieve high standards of excellence. When student
learning needs are identified, educators can select appropriate teaching
and learning approaches, with special focus on the learning needs of
the lowest performing students. Then, planners must identify what
teachers need to know and be able to do in order to use such
approaches in the classroom, and subsequently, design and develop
high-quality professional development plans to build teachers and
administrators’ capacities to address student learning needs in
powerful ways. In a thoughtful planning process, data analysis,
curriculum and instructional planning, and professional development
are linked together, and focus on the ongoing improvement of student
learning. This issue of the Professional Development Newsletter
provides you with resources that will be helpful to you as you engage
in this planning process.
EDUCATION DATA PARTNERSHIP
The Ed-Data Partnership website provides profiles and reports at the
state, county, district and school level. These reports provide
information about school and district performance, staffing, and
students. Information is updated annually after it is released by the
California Department of Education. The Alameda County Office of
Education, the California Department of Education, EdSource, and the
Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team work together to
maintain this site, with the goal of providing information for
informed decisionmaking. Use this website to access information to
help profile and monitor school or district programs.
http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/welcome.htm
DATAQUEST
The California Department of Education’s DataQuest site provides
school, district, state, and county reports in a variety of areas.
Among the reports available are Academic Performance Index (API)
reports, course enrollments, dropouts by grade, ethnicity, and
gender, number of English learners by language, enrollment,
graduates, high school test data including SAT/ACT/AP, staffing,
SAT 9, special education, and others. Use this website to access
Information to help profile and monitor school or district programs.
http://data1.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/
STAR RESULTS
This California Department of Education website reports results for
California's Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) for
1998-2001. STAR test reports include Stanford 9, California
Standards Tests, and SABE 2. District, school, county, and state
reports are available. Use this site to create and download
disaggregated data reports to examine patterns of student achievement
on the STAR tests.
http://star.cde.ca.gov/
CAHSEE ITEM ANALYSIS REPORTS
State-level items analysis reports for the March and May 2001
administrations of the CAHSEE are now available on the CDE Web site.
Item analysis reports at the local level were distributed to
districts and county offices in September of 2001. Use these
reports, in combination with the released items, for assessing
strengths and weaknesses in student learning, designing focused
intervention approaches, and developing professional development
plans for high school students.
http://www.cde.ca.gov/statetests/cahsee/itemstatistics.html
The corresponding released items can be found at:
http://www.cde.ca.gov/statetests/cahsee/
CAHSEE RESULTS REPORTS
Aggregate reports of CAHSEE 2001 results can be accessed for schools,
districts, counties, and the state. These reports display results
for all students and subgroups including gender, race/ethnicity,
language fluency, economic status, and special education program
participation. The mathematics and English/language arts results
are reported separately. No individual student results are reported.
The information on this Web site will be updated with each
administration of the CAHSEE. Use these reports to view group
results of CAHSEE testing.
http://cahsee.cde.ca.gov/2001/availablereports.html
SCHOOL ACCOUNTABILITY REPORT CARD (SARC)
The purpose of the SARC is to provide public information about
schools and districts. The CDE has made a template available. The
template includes but is not limited to information about school
demographics, school safety and climate for learning, multiple level
multiple year and subgroup academic data, class size, teachers and
staff, curriculum and instruction, and fiscal data. Schools and
districts engaging in professional development planning may wish to
access the SARC in order to inform decisionmaking. One of the
advantages to using the SARC is that it enables schools to prepare a
comprehensive profile of site-level data.
http://www.cde.ca.gov/ope/sarc/
TOOLKIT98
Toolkit98 is designed to assist classroom teachers to better assess
student learning. It is intended to provide resources for those who
have responsibility for planning professional development in
assessment for teachers. Toolkit98 emphasizes alternative
assessments, which the document describes as “any type of assessment
in which students create a response to a question rather than choose
a response from a list. Alternative assessments can include short
answer questions, oral presentations, demonstrations, exhibitions,
and portfolios.” Toolkit98 resources are designed to build teacher
proficiency in assessing student learning through alternative
assessments.
http://www.nwrel.org/assessment/toolkit98.asp
ASSESSMENT FOR UNDERSTANDING
The George Lucas Educational Foundation presents “Assessment for
Understanding”, a series of related articles that explore critical
issues in examining student learning to inform instruction. Embedded
links in the article allow the reader to examine key topics and
issues in greater detail, and read more about examples of effective
assessment practices.
http://glef.org/assessoverview.html
THE EDUCATION TRUST
The Education Trust focuses on bringing about high academic
achievement of all students at all levels, kindergarten through
college, and closing the achievement gaps between low-income students
and students of color and other youth. The Education Trust website
presents data that document the achievement gaps that exist at state
and national levels, and the work of high poverty, high minority
schools that perform among the top schools in their respective
states. Use this website to learn more about the achievement gap,
and approaches for closing the gap.
http://www.edtrust.org/main/index.asp
ADD IT UP
“Add It Up: Using Research to Improve Education for Low-Income and
Minority Students”, authored by the Poverty and Race Research Action
Council, offers research-based strategies for helping all students
meet high standards. Chapter Seven, “Five Steps to Using Assessment
as an Effective Tool for Accountability” provides guidance on
approaches for using assessment and data inquiry for program
planning. Use this document to identify and plan approaches that best
serve low-income and minority students.
http://www.prrac.org/additup.pdf
DESIGNS FOR LEARNING
Designs for Learning is a research-based system for planning and
implementing professional development. The Designs for Learning kit
was jointly produced by the California Professional Development
Consortia, the California Department of Education, the Center for the
Future of Teaching and Learning, and the California Staff Development
Council. Designs for Learning leads educators away from "one-shot"
inservice training toward a deeper, more comprehensive approach that
leads to improvement in teaching and student learning. The first
design element addressed in Designs for Learning is Student Data.
Resources provide information on using performance data,
including student feedback, teacher observation, analysis of student
work, and test scores as tools to enhance teacher and student
learning. The eight-page overview of Designs for Learning in the PDF
file below provides more information about Designs for Learning,
along with ordering information. Use this kit to plan high-quality
professional development approaches.
http://www.cde.ca.gov/pd/pdf/designsintro.pdf
LEARNING FROM THE BEST
The complete “Professional Development: Learning from the Best”
toolkit is available online at the North Central Regional Educational
Laboratory website. This toolkit provides a variety of tools for
professional development planners, and features strategies used by
award-winning professional development programs. The chapter entitled
“Make A Clear Plan That Includes A Professional Development Needs
Assessment Process” on pages 19 - 24 provides information on using
data for professional development planning, and “Make A Clear Plan
That Includes Professional Development Goals” on pages 25 - 30
reviews approaches that can be used to use data for professional
development planning.
http://www.ncrel.org/pd/toolkit.htm
LESSONS FROM DISTRICTS: BRINGING ABOUT CHANGE
The “Six Districts, One Goal of Excellence” article from the National
Staff Development Council’s Journal of Staff Development (Fall 2001)
reports results of the District Effectiveness Study released in May
2001 by the Educational Research Service. The study discusses
approaches used by these districts to produce higher levels of
student performance. Also discussed are common elements that
districts have used to create higher performing school systems.
Among the effective approaches discussed are using of teams to
monitor performance data and plan for improvement, providing
ongoing professional development, and research-based planning. The
Sacramento Unified School District is one of the school districts
featured in this article. Use this article to find out more about
districts that have engaged in data analysis, program development,
and professional development that led to improved student results.
http://www.nsdc.org/library/jsd/cawelti224.pdf
USING DATA TO IMPROVE EDUCATIONAL RESULTS
The “Data Inquiry and Analysis for Educational Reform” ERIC Digest
(December 2001) examines the most useful kinds of data to drive
school improvement, steps that must be taken to collect and analyze
data, the administrator’s role in leading the data-driven reform
process, and results that can be expected from data inquiry and
analysis.
http://eric.uoregon.edu/publications/digests/digest153.html
NEW ROUTES FOR USING DATA
“New Routes Open When One Type Of Data Crosses Another” from the
Journal of Staff Development (Winter 2000) examines the role that
data can play in solving school problems. The author discusses
multiple types of data, and ways in which data can help to replace
hypotheses and opinions with facts, assist educators in identifying
problems and their root causes, assist schools in focusing resources
on problem solutions, and track results.
http://www.nsdc.org/library/jsd/bernhardt211.html
BECOMING A DATA-DRIVEN ORGANIZATION
“Data-Driven Organizations . . . What Do They Look Like?” discusses
the importance of using multiple sources of data on an ongoing basis
to answer important questions, and improve the quality of services
provided by an organization.
http://www.portical.org/cox1more.html
CHARACTERISTICS OF STRONG MATH/SCIENCE STAFF DEVELOPMENT
The American Educational Research Association (AERA) issued a
press release (1-28-01) about the quality of teacher inservice and
its affect on classroom practices, especially in the fields math and
science. The study based on responses from a nationally
representative sample of 1,027 public school math and science
teachers in grades K-12 is the first large-scale comparison of how
different characteristics of professional development affect
teachers’ learning. Researchers identified six characteristics that
make professional development effective and improve instruction.”
They are: form, duration, collective participation, content, active
learning and coherence of professional development experiences.
http://www.aera.net/communications/news/020128.htm
This electronic newsletter is sponsored by the Region 8 California
Professional Development Consortium (CPDC) administered by the
Kern County Superintendent of Schools Office. For more information about
the CPDC call Christina Doyle at 661 636-4331. To subscribe or unsubscribe
from this newsletter, email cdoyle@kern.org, or send a fax 661 636-4135.
If you wish to receive our free electronic High School Newsletter or
Middle School Newsletter, email or call Chris at cdoyle@kern.org.
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