Evidence-Based Urban Legends

Education treats the idea of "evidence-based" a little differently than the rest of the data-using world. We have fallen in love with the idea of a number. That number does not necessarily have to relate to the concept we are trying to support; if it is a number, it is good enough.

http://davidmlane.com/ben/

I learned my favorite evidence-based urban legend in a curriculum training. According to the slide (which was supposed to justify the county's choice in curriculum), 62% of students who took Advanced Placement (AP) courses at the time of the survey went to college.
Let's break this down, shall we? First of all, an AP course is a college level course. Any child who took the course and passed the test earned college credit. If 62% of the students passed the test and NOT ONE ever stepped foot on a college campus, some would still report the statistic the exact same way.
Now let's pretend that 62% of those students actually went to a college campus and even graduated from college. There's still a problem: the students who took the AP classes at the time of the survey were HAND PICKED for their performance and ambition. 100% of them were predicted to go to college. Only 62% of the students the school system designated as college bound actually made it.
Let's follow the extrapolation further. The curriculum publisher was telling us that these numbers meant that the AP courses CAUSED 62% of students to go to college. Therefore, if we put all of our students in AP courses, our college rate would rise substantially, to 62%. Suspiciously, even though the slide data was nearly 20 years old, there have been no progress monitoring reports  or updates since its original publication. I personally schedule each of my home children for 2 AP classes to give them a 124% chance of attending college.

http://davidmlane.com/ben/outlier.gif

Data-Driven Teaching Deserves a Dashboard

I want a teaching dashboard. I want to have access to all my data in a visual, logical, coherent format. I want to be able to select which section of data I view and manipulate those variables with simple, single clicks.

Dashboard Definition

(a sample dashboard from this blog)

"a graphical summary of various pieces of important information, typically used to give an overview of a business" -Google

In other  words, this is a way to measure performance, make conclusions about the results, and adjust accordingly.

 

Example

My dashboard clearly illustrates that blogs with directly related titles attract more readers than do my more creative titular efforts. The most aptly titled blog is earning the most reads. I have concluded that my readers (you, thank you) want to know the topic before they decide whether or not to invest the time. This is fair, and as the blogger, it is my job to be considerate of readers' needs. I will consciously title blogs with key words, and I will monitor the response through my dashboard. (Or you could just comment below to let me know how I'm doing... :-)

Dashboard Data in the Classroom

In education, we tend to act like business is our older sibling. Sometimes we ask to borrow stuff, sometimes we sneak it, and sometimes we buy similar things and pretend we thought of it ourselves. I will not try to establish the boundaries between business and education, but I would like to beg to borrow their dashboards (or steal them when business isn't looking).

I want to see a line graph displaying the attendance trend over time. I want to be able to segregate out by grade, subject, period, or even individual student. Or by day, or week. I want a color-coded pie chart demonstrating where students struggled most on FCAT by strand, and I want to be able to toggle from whole population to course to class to individual student from one menu. I want a place to collect, store, and display data I gather through classroom tests and even observations.

In a fantasy world, I would have one-click options for data-driven decisions. I want access to lesson plans, activities, and instructional materials for a specific Common Core standards based on my students' results.

I should be able to enter decisions as data points and see the response logically, objectively, and visually. If I notice that I have a much larger absenteeism rate on Mondays, I could start playing review games every Monday. I could enter that decision into a data point and track the trend. If attendance began improving on Mondays, I could continue with the planned activities. Conversely, if absenteeism rates increased further, I would know to adjust again in some other way. (For more advanced readers, please note that I am aware of causation vs. correlation and am simplifying for practical purposes. Although, if you wanted to comment about it...)

In order to collect, enter, and display the above data in any meaningful way would take dozens of hours away from my planning and preparing, hours that I do not have. I only have three options: postpone intense data analysis, make data-based decisions nearly blindly and hope, or send a fake text message to get business out of the house while I raid the closet.

Do you have any tools or strategies you use for data collection, entry, and management? Please comment below to let us know your process for making and monitoring data-based decisions.

 

 

 

Value Add Memories

We, my students and I, had a rough year last year: one that almost ended my teaching career. Yet when I look back, all I remember is the good. Cognitively, I know that I felt frustrated and ineffective, but I do not feel frustrated or ineffective when I review the year.
As I combed carefully through my Value Add scores from last year, I wasn't thinking "darn that brat for earning only one star" or "I wish I'd have had twenty of her, she who earned me three stars."
I was remembering their faces and our experiences together. I was proud of the students who did well, and worried about or upset for those who did not perform as well as expected. I do not even know how I "did" because I was not thinking that way.
This selective memory reminded me of a children's Christmas book that caught my eye because it had "teacher" in the title. Apparently, Santa lost his list, and he went to teachers to determine if students were worthy of gifts or not. I will reluctantly admit that I became a little goose-bumpy and moist-eyed when every teacher proceeded to say good things about every student. It was well done, just on the bearable side of sappy without crossing over to cheesy.


I have personally benefited from selective teacher memory. Now that I am safely ensconced in my former high school, my dream school, I can freely admit that I was a terrible high school student. Running into former teachers terrified me for years into my teaching career.
I would see one of my teachers in a training and feel certain that he or she would call me out. I was afraid to apply at my old high school because some of my former teachers still worked there. I figured they would corner the principal and give him a preventive earful (like my senior year when they refused to work with me if I was in the same class as my best friend).
Instead, my teachers began recruiting me. When I finally worked up the nerve to go for it (it was either that or leave teaching), my teachers were overwhelmingly supportive. They made calls and recommendations and gave me insider knowledge. When I was hired, they introduced me around and sang my praises and thanked me for coming to help.
None of them, not one of my former teachers, shows any sign of remembering what a frustrating student I was. Daily I resist the urge to ask "You do remember me right? The girl who slept or talked and turned in no work and still set the curve anyway? You're not confusing me with a better-performing classmate, are you?"
But I don't think they are confused. I think we teachers are just wired to remember the good. Regardless of stars or politics or pay scales or test results, at the end of the school year, the Value Add is the opportunity to impact the life of a student and the knowledge that each student has positively impacted our lives in turn.

I realize that Value Add measures, the politics around them, and their impact on our lives outside of the classroom via pay and emotional tolls are touchy subjects. Hopefully you understand that your value both to your students specifically and to society in general cannot be measured with tests, graphs, numbers, or graphic aids. How do you measure your value? Please comment below to tell us what you hold dear to remember your value, even without numbers to confirm it.

Effective Affective Domain

I am struggling to get my classroom organized, and consequently my instruction is suffering too.
Before I begin lamenting the lack of space and the awkwardness of what little space is available, let me state unequivocally that I am grateful to have a room. I do not know what the physical situation is in your school, county, district, or state, but around here we have "floaters" in most schools. For those you who have the fortune of ignorant bliss, let me shatter your illusions.
Floaters do not have designated classrooms, which means that floaters move their classroom with them at least once during the school. I floated for the 2011-2012 year. I switched rooms six times a day with no base desk, computer, or preparation area.
Most of the teachers into whose rooms I floated were amazingly amenable to the arrangement, but I just could not get myself together to feel successful.Some teachers love floating, prefer it in fact. I find it excruciatingly difficult to function effectively with that frequency of upheaval.
I am ecstatic to have my own room. Even better, I am kind of insulated so noise from my room is not catastrophic. Probably my favorite thing about my room is the window; I have a room with a view.

The problems start with the addition of twenty-five grown-up sized bodies to this space.
I like to use the walls almost like stations with interactive purposes. In this room, the only space where I have managed any interactivity is the door. Even that is limited to entry and exit.
At a popular education site, I learned that with just $1000, a full three day weekend, 8 professional designers, and forty so volunteers (not to mention the express permission of the principal and district), I can create an ideal learning environment (or at least make a good start).
If it were not for the money, professionals, volunteers, and permission, I could have done it over Labor Day weekend. ;-)
Then, too, there is the question of priorities. If I really did get access to those resources, is classroom design the best first use? With that much money, I could feed all 150 of my students snacks for a month. I could provide all of their school supplies (no more McDonald's napkins for tissues) for the year. Imagine the impact that could be made by 8 professionals each volunteering 3 days for 1 classroom. They could mentor, tutor, entertain, and/or inspire. Along with the other 40 volunteers, they could demonstrate how much our kids and their education mean to the community.
While all those volunteers are effecting social change in the classroom, I could actually get some grading done.
 How do you prioritize to manage your time? Please comment below if you know or use and strategies for time management or creating an effective classroom environment.