Today I attended my first big meeting in my new job as a Teacher on Special Assignment. In this position, I have been charged with developing a framework for remedial instruction at the high school level, which could pose quite a challenge. At the meeting today, our “essential question” was “What does the data tell you about your program?”<\/p>\n
My dilemma–there really is no data for my program since my program doesn’t exactly exist.<\/p>\n
This concerns me on several levels and also creates some rather scary professional challenges. First, I now feel that part of my job will be to determine how I can collect data. It’s a little daunting to consider creating a program that has no real data to guide its creation.<\/p>\n
One of the great things about writing, however, is how it leads me to new insights. As I write this, I realize that I do have some<\/i> data, it’s just not very useful and certainly not inspiring. A quick review:<\/p>\n
I have the graduation test results for those students who retested this summer. A depressingly low number passed. There was little to indicate that those who attended summer test prep sessions did much better. So, that’s an issue.<\/p>\n
I have 8th grade CRCT scores for incoming freshman.<\/p>\n
What I don’t have, and what teachers really need, is any data that identifies at risk students once they’re in the high school setting. After 8th grade, the next large scale measure doesn’t occur until the end of the junior year, which is just too late. So what can we do?<\/p>\n
Lots to think about…<\/p>\n
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