The arguments for new education reform often revolve around classrooms adapting to the individual needs of each student. This, of course, is possible using technology caters to large volumes of students. This technology can be improved by collecting large data sets around the historical performance of each student, as encouraged by No Child Left Behind.

Scholastic has put together an article outlining best practices in building a data-driven classroom. See below for snippets:

Choose the right words. “Data-driven decision making” is a misleading concept. It suggests jumping straight from data to a decision, which is a shallow way to operate and creates anxiety that data will force changes that teachers don’t agree with or understand.

Instead, create a culture of data-driven discussion. Let teachers know that you view data as a foundation for talking about students’ needs and opportunities in a more rigorous way, and that better instructional planning-not rash decisions-is the goal.

Keep it streamlined. Too often in school districts, data appear in a form that is pleasing to the office of research and assessment but doesn’t mean much to anyone else.

Long tables of numbers, complex scatter plots, and anything that depends on understanding standard deviations will not inspire teachers to use data. Teachers will appreciate simple graphical displays such as pie charts or graphs that show progress or the lack of it, with ideas for action.

Don’t waste their time. Pay attention to the “transaction time” associated with getting data. Teachers who must dedicate a great deal of effort to completing assessment tasks and paperwork or doing data entry often have no patience left for the thoughtful use of the data to inform instruction.

Set short-term goals. Many of the measures we use reflect a standard for achievement that you either hit or don’t hit by the end of the year. But teaching and learning are not about do-or-die moments; they are about setting ambitious goals for growth and continuously monitoring progress toward those goals.

Of course, you can’t improve your data techniques if you haven’t even started collecting. Have you begun?

The New York Times Magazine has an excellent piece profiling Doug Lemov, previously a teacher, charter school founder and currently an educational consultant to help teachers become more effective. With so many failed attempts in the past by the government, Lemov took it upon himself to make a change:

Lemov himself pushed for data-driven programs that would diagnose individual students’ strengths and weaknesses. But as he went from school to school that winter, he was getting the sinking feeling that there was something deeper he wasn’t reaching. On that particular day, he made a depressing visit to a school in Syracuse, N.Y., that was like so many he’d seen before: “a dispiriting exercise in good people failing,” as he described it to me recently.

Although my experience is limited to that of a student, effective classroom strategy seems to always be a priority of educational organizations but rarely one that shows any progress. Why is this?

But when it came to actual teaching, the daily task of getting students to learn, the school floundered. Students disobeyed teachers’ instructions, and class discussions veered away from the lesson plans. In one class Lemov observed, the teacher spent several minutes debating a student about why he didn’t have a pencil. Another divided her students into two groups to practice multiplication together, only to watch them turn to the more interesting work of chatting…But he realized that he had no clue how to advise schools about their main event: how to teach.

The question I keep coming back to is: do we help the teachers or the students? The answer floats somewhere in between. The temporary solution is outlined as this:

Yet he has come to the conclusion that simply dangling better pay will not improve student performance on its own. And the stakes are too high: while student scores on national assessments across demographic groups have risen, the percentage of students at proficiency — just 39 percent of fourth graders in math and 33 percent in reading — is still disturbingly low. And there is still a wide gap between black and white students in reading and math. The smarter path to boosting student performance, Lemov maintains, is to improve the quality of the teachers who are already teaching.

Thus, the responsibility rests on the teacher. This is one reason we have profiled various teachers on this blogs with their tips for improving. If you have any tips, please leave them in the comments.

This post is part of the Teachers Certification Map’s “discussion series,” a collection of posts featuring highlights and questions around the evolving state of education aimed at enlightening young teachers as they embark on their careers.

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The perfectionist in the classroom is always obvious. They can typically add as much to the classroom environment as they can take away.

Daniel Pink has a good piece on perfectionism on his blog, where he discusses why and how it occurs:

According to research reported in this Miller-McCune article, perfectionism comes in two varieties: adaptive and maladaptive. And one of the key determinants of the type of perfectionism someone displays is whether the quest for perfection is “motivated from an inner urge or an outside push.”

My favorite quote was his description on when perfectionism is beneficial and when it’s not:

If you’re driving hard because of your own desire for excellence, that can actually lead to greater satisfaction and psychological health. But if you’re pursuing perfection because of pressure from others — parents, bosses, peers — that’s likely to take you down the path of dissatisfaction and reduced well-being.

DISCUSSION: How do you deal with the over-achieving perfectionist in the classroom? Does it add to your classroom environment or detract from it?

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Do you know someone with great insights to share with young teachers, or do you want your material considered for a discussion topic?

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