Data-Driven Instruction Can't Work If Instructors Don't Use The Data

Matthew DiCarlo

In education today, data, particularly testing data, are everywhere. One of many potentially valuable uses of these data is helping teachers improve instruction - e.g., identifying students' strengths and weaknesses, etc. Of course, this positive impact depends on the quality of the data and how it is presented to educators, among other factors. But there's an even more basic requirement - teachers actually have to use it.

In an article published in the latest issue of the journal Education Finance and Policy, economist John Tyler takes a thorough look at teachers' use of an online data system in a mid-sized urban district between 2008 and 2010. A few years prior, this district invested heavily in benchmark formative assessments (four per year) for students in grades 3-8, and an online "dashboard" system to go along with them. The assessments' results are fed into the system in a timely manner. The basic idea is to give these teachers a continual stream of information, past and present, about their students' performance.

Tyler uses weblogs from the district, as well as focus groups with teachers, to examine the extent and nature of teachers' data usage (as well as a few other things, such as the relationship between usage and value-added). What he finds is not particularly heartening. In short, teachers didn't really use the data.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at July 14, 2013 12:05 AM
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