How to Personalize Your School Data: Get Muddy

Once upon a time, I had time to troll through tons of data. I was a teacher.  I was a literacy/data coach.  I was an assistant principal, and then I became a principal.  And, all of that time that I had to scroll through data and make charts was gone.  I thought I lost part of what was one of my important strengths - knowing and being the expert on my school's data.

But, I discovered that one of the great parts of being a principal is that you get to teach adults.  And, the skill that my staff has needed me to teach is to review and understand data.  So, now, I'm not the primary source of data collection, but I am an archiver and researcher.  I know where to go, and I've seen enough that my instincts are sharp even if I don't have the data in front of me.

One skill that I have learned is how to personalize my school's data to fit my time and my school's needs.  I wanted to share some of these tips because I often hear principals lament that they are not "data savvy"; but, what I would argue is that they are student and staff savvy and organizing your data reports with this in mind can make a big difference to how you approach school data.

Outcome Data v. Actionable Data.  Accountability looms over all administrators, and we may find ourselves obsessed with the outcome data.  We want to know how well we are moving towards the end of the year goals.  We check attendance.  We check failure rates.  We check averages.

This is a great start, but the data isn't actionable.  I mean we can call in our staff and students, yell, scream, beg, and plead about the numbers moving in the wrong way or celebrate when they move in the right way, but the fact is that outcome data doesn't really move anyone to action.

Actionable data is student and staff level data that let's you know who to work with and what types of strategies to use.  It's knowing which of your teachers have the highest and lowest failure rates.  It's knowing which students and staff are missing a lot of school and who is at school everyday.  Actionable data is both positive and negative data that helps your team figure out who and what to focus on.

Select Your Priorities.  One mistake that people make is that they want to focus on everything; as a result, data overwhelms them, they never make any deadlines, and the data is usually the autopsy data that educators complain vehemently about.  As the principal, you have to guide and collaborate with your team members on the selection of the BEST data points for your school's mission and vision.  There is no point in focusing solely on test scores if your attendance is 70% - I'm pretty sure that whatever you do will fall flat.  There is no point on focusing heavily on RTI or MTSS Levels 2 if you don't make the 80% cut-off at Level 1.

Data should make you more effective - not more crazy.  Select 5-7 non-negotiables that everyone can focus on.  These 5-7 points should be easy to understand, easy to access, and easy to track (Note: You may have to train someone to make this data available).

For instance, my school's vision is "Excellence Today, Success Tomorrow: Bogan Today, College Tomorrow".  We closely follow two metrics - On-Track to Graduation and College Selectivity.  Everyone in the building and parents are trained to understand the data.

On-Track status is given on Red, Yellow, or Green paper to indicate student status (the Excel sheets are coded the same way).  Easy to understand (I love hearing parents ask students why their friends' letters are red or yellow, and I love seeing kids display their green letters), easy to access (simple pull of grades combined with test score data), and easy to track (just add columns).

College Selectivity is given every quarter with a combination of students current Explore, Plan, or ACT score, their projected G.P.A. based on their current grades, and their college selectivity (the type of college/university that they currently qualify for).  Easy to understand (data at the top, table at the bottom), easy to access (a macro generates it after dropping in data), and easy to track (add columns).

Scroll the lists - don't study them.  Many people make the mistake of thinking that they have to be a guru around every report that comes out.  You don't.  You simply need to start noticing patterns in the data.  The more you scroll your students'  and staffs' names and the corresponding data, the more you will learn about your school.  More importantly, you'll start to pick up on who and what to pay attention to.  When you look at the outcome data, it will have some real, personal meaning to you - not just a numeric impression.

Understand and accept that you will become an expert with your number of exposures, not with the amount of time that you spend on one report.

Chunk the data.  If you have 1,000 students and 100 plus staff members, there is no way that you are going to be able to review every single data point.  Instead, set a cut off.  Make sure that the cut-off is both positive and negative.  For instance, you want to know the top and bottom 30 students for attendance.  You want to know the top and bottom 20 teachers for failure rate.  You want to see the Honor Roll List and the list of students with two or more failures.

Also, make it clear to the data owners that you want to be able to talk about your data chunks, so you can continuously get updates.  How is such and such doing?  Where is this group moving?  What have you done to support .... since we last met?  I saw X moved off the list, what's going on?

This will help you quickly assess if your strategies are successful, help you connect with stakeholders around their own personal data, and make the data manageable enough to help you decide where to spend your time.

The positive and negative data will also help you balance your leadership approach.  Too often, we focus on negative data and this can translate into negative leadership (don't forget to celebrate small advances and celebrate them with targeted groups).

Where are you at with managing your school data?  What data points are you using to drive your school's mission and vision?