Using Data To Drive Instruction: Teachers’ Experiences of Data Routines in Six High-Performing, High-Poverty, Urban Schools

This qualitative analysis of teachers’ experiences of school-level data routines is part of a larger, comparative case study, “Developing Human Capital Within Schools,” conducted by the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers. Within one city, we interviewed 142 teachers and administrators in six high-poverty schools (traditional, charter, and turnaround), all of which had achieved the highest ranking in the state’s accountability system. Here, we analyze how teachers and administrators used student learning data to inform and direct instruction. In all six schools, teachers regularly and collaboratively gathered, analyzed and responded to a range of types of data, including common interim assessments, samples of student work, teacher-administered reading assessments, responses to questions on exit slips, teacher-made quizzes, unit tests, performance assessments, homework completion records and disciplinary records such as demerits and detentions. Importantly, the data practices in these school extended well beyond efforts to simply raise state test scores despite the significant pressure these schools experienced for improving their results. Teachers used data routines in conjunction with curriculum planning and other professional activities to collaboratively build their knowledge of what they were teaching, how to teach it, how to assess students’ progress and what to do when students were not reaching standards.